On Mondays and Thursdays we talk French. We have got a
French nurse; and those are the only days in the week on which she
doesn't understand a word that's said to her. We can none of us
understand father, and that makes him furious. He won't say it in
English; he makes a note of it, meaning to tell us on Tuesday or
Friday, and then, of course, he forgets, and wonders why we haven't
done it. He's the dearest fellow alive. When I think of him as a
big boy, then he is charming, and if he really were only a big boy
there are times when I would shake him and feel better for it."
She laughed again. I wanted her to go on talking, because her laugh
was so delightful. But we had reached the road, and she said she
must go back: there were so many things she had to do.
"We have not settled about Dick," I reminded her.
"Mother took rather a liking to him," she murmured.
"If Dick could make a living," I said, "by getting people to like
him, I should not be so anxious about his future--lazy young devil!"
"He has promised to work hard if you let him take up farming," said
Miss Janie.
"He has been talking to you?" I said.
She admitted it.
"He will begin well," I said. "I know him. In a month he will have
tired of it, and be clamouring to do something else."
"I shall be very disappointed in him if he does," she said.
"I will tell him that," I said, "it may help. People don't like
other people to be disappointed in them.
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