Mrs. Molesworth - Jasper

“What were you saying, Miss Leila, my dear?” she inquired. “Something about a ‘slum’?”

“It’s what Jasper was saying,” said Leila, and she went on to explain.

Nurse got rather red.

“It can’t be called a slum where my cousin lives,” she said. “She’s a respectable dressmaker in a small way, and suchlike don’t live in slums. Still it won’t be as poor a place as that where,” she hesitated, and then went on, “where the new house will be.”

“Jasper’s so vulgar,” said Chrissie, “the minute you speak of being poor, he thinks it means leaving off being ladies and gentlemen.”

“I doesn’t,” exclaimed the boy indignantly. “Nothin’d made Dads and Mums not be ladies and gentlemen – and us too,” but the last words somewhat less confidently.

Both the girls laughed.

“Thank you, Jap,” said Leila, “though I don’t wonder he doesn’t feel quite sure of you , Chrissie. You really needn’t talk of ‘vulgar,’ with your ‘heads and tails,’ like a street boy.”

A sharp retort was on Christabel’s lips, but Nurse hastened to interrupt it.

“What are you so busy about, my dear little boy?” she said, turning to Jasper, which made the others look at him also.

“I’se packin’,” was the reply, and then they saw that he was surrounded by his special treasures, in various stages of newness and oldness, completeness and brokenness. “Mums said I might divide them, and the old ones are to go to the ill children; and I’m goin’ to pack the others very caref’ly, for you see they’ll have to last me now till I’m big,” and he gave a little sigh, for in his unselfish, yet childish heart, there had

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