“Maimie dear, you must not trouble yourself about what can’t be helped,” I said.
She came towards me then, and flung herself down with her face on my knees.
“Oh, it seems as if I brought you nothing but harm, nothing but harm!” she cried. “And it is all my own wilfulness. If I had not been ill you would not have been away so long from 'The Gables!’ And now I don’t know what to do.”
“Only don’t grieve, Maimie,” I whispered. Somehow none of us could ever bear to see Maimie unhappy.
“I have brought you nothing but trouble,” she moaned. “All the expense and worry; and no return. And Cress having to go away because of me. O yes, I know it has been that, though nobody says so. Cress would not have gone, if I had not been here. I didn’t see it in time, or I would have gone away myself. And Jack is unhappy too. And now there is this about Aunt Briscoe. Nothing but trouble and loss,—all through me. I don’t know how to bear it.”
I did not know how to comfort her at first. There was just so much truth in the words as to make denial of them impossible. And yet we all loved her far too well to wish that Churton had never sent her to our house.
“Maimie, hush,—you must hush,” I said at length. “You make me feel that I was wrong to speak freely to you as I did just now. These things are not in our hands; and we must not wish to choose for ourselves. It was God who gave you to us, and I always look upon you as one of His dearest gifts to me in life,—only next to my own children. You are ours, and you will be ours still, even if your father takes you away for a time.”
“But Cress!”
“Cress had to go—because of his want of self-government. That was the real reason, not his love to you. It does not seem to me that his love for you is worth much. Just a passing fancy.”
“O I am so glad you think so,” she said, with a deep sigh.