"Oh, what a pity! I felt so like telling it now. If you had really been the sort of sympathetic person Sir Deryck described, you would have said: 'No; and I should so LOVE to hear it!'" "No; and I should so LOVE to hear it!" said Nurse Rosemary. "Too late! That sort of thing, to have any value should be spontaneous. It need not be true; but it MUST be spontaneous. But, talking of a high chair,--when you say those chaffy things in a voice like Jane's, and just as Jane would have said them--oh, my wig!--Do you know, that is the duchess's only original little swear. All the rest are quotations. And when she says: 'My wig!' we all try not to look at it. It is usually slightly awry. The toucan tweaks it. He is so very LOVING, dear bird!" "Now hand me the buttered toast," said Nurse Rosemary; "and don't tell me any more naughty stories about the duchess. No! That is the thin bread-and-butter. I told you you would lose your bearings. The toast is in a warm plate on your right. Now let us make believe I am Miss Champion, and hand it to me, as nicely as you will be handing it to her, this time to-morrow." "It is easy to make believe you are Jane, with that voice," said Garth; "and yet--I don't know. I have never really associated you with her. One little sentence of old Rob's made all the difference to me. He said you had fluffy floss-silk sort of hair. No one could ever imagine Jane with fluffy floss-silk sort of hair! And I believe that one sentence saved the situation. Otherwise, your voice would have driven me mad, those first days. As it was, I used to wonder sometimes if I could possibly bear it. You understand why, now; don't you? And yet, in a way, it is NOT like hers. Hers is deeper; and she often speaks with a delicious kind of drawl, and uses heaps of slang; and you are such a very proper little person; and possess what the primers call 'perfectly correct diction.' What fun it would be to hear you and Jane talk together! And yet--I don't know. I should be on thorns, all the time." "Why?" "I should be so awfully afraid lest you should not like one another. You see, YOU have really, in a way, been more to me than any one else in the world; and SHE--well, she IS my world," said Garth, simply. "And I should be so afraid lest she should not fully appreciate you; and you should not quite understand her. She has a sort of way of standing and looking people up and down, and, women hate it; especially pretty fluffy little women. They feel she spots all the things that come off." "Nothing of mine comes off," murmured Nurse Rosemary, "excepting my patient, when he will not stay on his chair."