with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated
as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a
narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the
three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom s Kindergarten school,
accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a
passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had
a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She
had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had
become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most
of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by
careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of
to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How
thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one
of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the
nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have
no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She
believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf,
and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs,
and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the
children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well
behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John s
footer days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried
an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the
basement of Miss Fulsom s school where the nurses wait. They sat on
forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference.
They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to
themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to
the nursery from Mrs. Darling s friends, but if they did come she first
whipped off Michael s pinafore and put him into the one with blue
braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John s hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr.
Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked.
4