Beamish he’s always around with?” Nicky said without looking up. “Oh, I think he can handle her.”“No, I didn’t mean Mrs. Beamish,” said Mouse with something like a snort. “I was referring to finance,” she continued with that occasional pomposity that always made Nicky laugh. “Nye’s in a bad way, Nicky, and your father’s more concerned than I’ve ever seen him.”“Nye’s been in a bad way so many times, darling Mouse. I don’t suppose it’s any worse than usual,” said Nicky carelessly.Mouse looked at the slim young body stretched at her feet and sighed. It seemed such a little time ago that another Nicky had lain there, a thin excitable child, her red hair falling over her face in wild elf-locks just as it did now. To Mouse, Nicky was still a precocious child, wilful, a little stubborn, her strange little heart as yet untouched.“This isn’t like other times,” she said, and her voice sounded tired and unlike herself.Nicky carefully pasted a highly colored kitten at a rakish angle in a corner of the book, then rolled over on to her back.“I believe you’re really worried, Mouse,”
