"I tell you I couldn't!"
"Only, if it is right? If you ought?"
Mrs. Plunkett shook her head.
"I didn't think it 'ud be such a comfort to tell you. Narcissus would ha' been no good. She'd only have got frightened, and wanted to run away. I didn't know the sort of girl you really were."
"You'll know me better now. And you'll give up doing things, won't you? And let me do them instead. Perhaps you'll feel better then."
"No, I shan't. There's no 'better' for me in this life. I know what it means, and I'm miserable."
Marigold was silent for a space before she answered. "Mother, I don't think it ought to make us 'miserable' to think of dying. Not when God's own Son came to die for us. And it's much better there than here,—there, with Him. Only I shouldn't like to think I was going sooner than He wanted me to go—I mean, if there was something I could do that might cure me, and if I wouldn't do it."
"You don't know nothing about it, Marigold."
"Well, we needn't talk of that now, need we? You'll see a doctor, and we'll hear what he says. And now don't you think you'd better go to bed and I'll see to father."
"I won't have father told."