For Mim had been told that even children die sometimes, and both Nurse Starke and Jane had a long catalogue of stories in which good little people were cut off in their earliest years, and bad little people lived on to an evil old age. Mim was often weak and ailing, and at such times the recollection of these stories came upon her. Nurse Starke's grim, hard manner relaxed when she was speaking to the little sick child, and her kindness to Mim, gaunt and grudging as it was, seemed to increase with the trouble the child gave her—a never-ceasing source of wonderment to Joe and myself, who were only in favour when we ceased to occupy Nurse Starke's attention. Nurse Starke had a brother, a boy of twelve or thereabouts (though we believed him to be eight-and-twenty at least), who was a page at a doctor's in Charlotte Street; and Nurse Starke, as a great treat, used to allow this young gentleman to spend the afternoon with us, and entertain us with his varied social powers. Gaspar—for that was his unfortunate name—was a talented boy with a taste for acrobatics, conjuring, killing flies, and putting lob-worms down Mim's back; but notwithstanding these powerful recommendations we looked coldly upon him, and, on the whole, discouraged his visits. He had a way of challenging Joe and me to fight him with one of his hands tied behind his back, by way of a handicap, which was not what you look for in a visitor, and moreover compromised our reputation for valour in Mim's eyes. On the whole he was not popular with us, and eventually he was proscribed by Nurse Starke herself on a charge of filling the nursery candle with gunpowder,
