A small girl in pink sunbonnet and pinafore, with clustering fair hair and blue eyes, smiled up in her face, and Millie had no spirit to return the smile. So the small child grew quickly grave again, and looked as if she had received a slight sprinkle of cold water. Mildred went wearily onward in her mood of sadness till she reached the old Church in its old churchyard. Then, feeling spent, she made her way to the tiny mound under the walnut-tree, and sat down upon a flat tombstone.
The little mound was just in front. Mildred meant soon to have a simple stone put there to the memory of her dear ones. Sitting here she seemed to be nearer to them than in Periwinkle Cottage, and it brought back the past vividly, that past which was seldom out of her mind.
"Not that they are in the graveyard," she murmured. "Louey herself—her dear little self—is not here under the soil. Phil is not under the sea. They are all together, at Home, as Phil said they might be that very night. Why was I the only one spared when no one wants me? Not a single being in all the world who really needs me, not one who would really care if I died to-night."
"Are you quite sure nobody needs you?" asked a voice close by.
Mildred looked up, hardly able at first to see through a mist of tears. She had not known herself to be speaking aloud. The mist cleared, and she found an elderly man to be standing beside the mound, his hands planted on a stick with a knob handle, his eyes bent pityingly on herself. He had long grey hair which curled naturally and fell almost to his shoulders.
"I wouldn't cry if I were you. Not so much at least. You look as if you had nearly cried your eyes out in the last few weeks. It would make your friends sorry if they knew; don't you think so?"
Mildred could scarcely reply, "I don't know."
"You were saved in the wreck lately, were you not? Ah, I felt sure it was so. And this is the grave of the pretty little one who was drowned? Your niece? Yes, yes! And you miss her very much? Yes, of course, that has to be so. But still I wouldn't cry too much. After all, they are happy; it isn't half so bad, don't you see, as if you were happy and they were unhappy. Don't you think I'm right?"
It was a new view of the question to Mildred. She did not quite know what to say.
"And if I were you, I wouldn't be too sure that nobody wanted me. How can you tell that?"