Miss Anne was puzzled, not seeing what the child meant.
"Here is Elisabeth," she said. "Now be sure you get back in good time. Elisabeth has to lay the cloth, you know, at one o'clock. You have just an hour."
Hecla nodded, smiled, promised, and ran off, Elisabeth trying to catch her.
Miss Anne walked slowly back to the house, pausing on the way to look at her favourite flowers, and thinking hard about poor Frederick and Mary, obliged to leave their dear little child behind, and not knowing where to send her.
"If only we could take little Ivy in! I should love to have another," she whispered. "Children in the house make life so different!" Then she looked up, almost guiltily, as if it were wrong not to feel as her sister did. And yet again she murmured aloud: "Poor little Ivy! If only we might!"
Later she returned to the drawing-room, where Miss Storey sat as before, calmly knitting. A letter lay at her side, addressed and stamped.
"I have written to Frederick, Anne."
Something in Miss Storey's face brought a gleam of hope. She looked tired and pale, but the smile was unusual. Miss Anne almost held her breath.
"I have told Frederick that we will give little Ivy a home. I could not say anything else when I began to—Why, my dear Anne!"
For Miss Anne broke into a little cry of joy, and dropped down on her knees in front of Miss Storey's chair, looking up with eyes that overflowed.