"Poor little Kitty!" Mary echoed in a quiet voice. "Did you go to look for Kitty among the rocks, I wonder?"
Mother shook her head. She wouldn't say what took her there, and she never would say nor talk about it afterward. Only, from the day I came back, she stopped all her lonesome walks, and only wanted to have me with her.
I couldn't sit down, mother held me so tight, and a feeling came as if I should drop if I went on any longer. I'd done a lot that day, you see.
Mary saw, for she always saw everything, and I suppose I did look white. She took a candle, and held it up near my face. Then mother saw too.
"Poor little Kittenkins!" says she tenderly, exactly as father used to do. It had been father's name for me, not mother's.
She put me down on the sofa, just as if I was a little child, and I let her do it. Then she spread a shawl over my feet, and took a chair close by, laying one hand on mine, and sitting there to keep watch.
"Shut your eyes and go to sleep," says she.
Wasn't it sweet to have mother telling me what to do again? I followed her bidding, and sleep wasn't long coming.
When I opened my eyes, mother sat there still. She hadn't stirred a finger. And I had slept two good hours at one stretch.
Mary didn't share mother's room with her that night after all, for mother would have nobody but me; and Mary was only glad to have it so.