"I couldn't have thought it of her," muttered Jack. He hid his face, and actually groaned aloud. "I thought there wasn't another girl in the world like Jessie." Then he looked up at his sister.
"Mimy, don't tell mother. I can't talk about it yet, and she would be so sorry. Just leave it for me to tell her. I'll do it some day; not yet. But I did think Jessie was different. I did think she cared for me a little."
[CHAPTER XII]
WHAT LIFE LOOKED LIKE TO MILDRED
MILDRED PATTISON came out of Periwinkle Cottage with a slow step, and stood gazing up the village street. She wanted to go to the Churchyard, but she rather mistrusted her own powers. Miss Perkins was gone out and Jessie was not within sight, and a wish had come over Millie to find her way to the little mound of earth, already turning green, where slept the remains of Louey, washed up the day after the wreck. The Captain's body had never been recovered. Like his wife, he had found his grave below ocean waters.
Mildred had not yet been out alone for any distance. Her strength was tardy in its return, and she had only once been toward the Churchyard, just near enough to see the little mound in a quiet corner some way off under a walnut-tree. Then she had felt weak, and had turned homeward again. That day Jessie had been her companion: and this was her first attempt at a solitary ramble.
A heavy sense of being alone in the world weighed her down. She began to wonder whether she had done wisely in settling at Old Maxham, even for a time, where she belonged to nobody and where nobody belonged to her. Work was long in appearing, and time hung on her hands.
Jessie seemed very fond of Mildred, but during some days past Jessie had been absent in mind and apparently much wrapped up in some trouble or worry of her own; and this afforded the one little additional touch which was required to make Millie's state of isolation almost more than she knew how to bear.
What did it matter to anybody whether she stayed or did not stay? What did it matter to anybody whether she lived or died? If she were called away that very night, no one in Old Maxham would do more than drop a passing tear, with a half careless "Dear me, how sad!"
"If only somebody belonged to me," sighed Millie as she went languidly along the street, with Hero close behind. "If only I did not feel myself so alone."