As for Briggs--who had certainly been the principal sufferer--her indignation burst out as soon as we saw the last of the doctor.
"Well, I never!" she exclaimed indignantly. Then with increased wrath, "Well, I never did!" After which two exclamations she paused to find suitable words in which to condemn the enormities of which Chris had been guilty.
For his part, he was not in the least disturbed by the general embarrassment--the only one who was not.
He gazed up at Briggs with an expression of injured innocence.
"Are you cross, Briggs?" he asked. "Have I been naughty?"
"Have you been naughty, Master Chris?" she asked, with wrathful sarcasm. "Oh, no! there _never_ was such a well-behaved young gentleman."
"Surely, Chris," I said, coming into the night-nursery, "you knew that you had no business to repeat to Dr. Saunders what Briggs said to me?"
"I wanted him to 'member about the tonic," he replied; "and I did want to know what Briggs meant about his head coming off his shoulders. Wasn't I a good boy?"
He received his answer, however, from Granny, who returned at this moment, a bright spot glowing in each of her faded, pink cheeks.
"My Chris!" she said, "my darling! What foolish thought made you ask such questions?"
Chris wrinkled his brows. "I want to be a very good boy and please you," he said querulously, and with a tremble in his voice; "and now Briggs scolds me, and now you scold me, and now I'm very unhappy."
"But don't you see, my pet," Granny said, more calmly; "don't you see what rude questions you asked Dr. Saunders? Oh, I felt ashamed of my little Chris!"
The little beggar at this point crawled to the bottom of his crib.
"I shall stay down here," said a muffled voice. "I shall stay here always and never come back again, as my Granny is so unkind."
"But you must see," she reiterated, addressing a shapeless mass of bed-clothes, "that you asked the kind doctor very naughty questions, and very silly ones too. Did you not understand when Briggs said that he had no head, she meant that he had a bad memory, my child? Did you not understand that? And did you not think how insulting, how very insulting it was to ask him such a question? And about the tonic too. Surely, my darling, if you had thought you must have seen that. And, especially, how wrong it was to repeat what you overheard. Does not my pet see what his Granny means?"