"Then I will not go either. I will stop with you," said Meg determinedly.
"No, no, no. I don't want you to stop with me! I don't want you!" replied Elsie with hurried emphasis. "I want to be alone. Of all the girls you are the one I want most to be left alone by."
"Why do you hate me, Elsie?" asked Meg gently.
"I don't hate you," replied Elsie, after a pause, in a faint, quavering voice. Then she added with labored utterance: "I am ashamed. Every time you look at me, every time you come near me, I am ashamed." Her voice gathered energy, while her breast heaved with tearless sobs. "The other girls look at me as if they were always thinking 'She is a thief,' and I don't mind—their looks not half (sob, sob) so much—as—I mind—your kind look. It makes me think—of—my dreadful wickedness."
"I look at you like that because I love you so dearly," said Meg, seeking to draw the child to her.
Elsie struggled and sobbed, but at last she let Meg take her on her lap and lean her cheek down on her head. It seemed to Meg as if the circle of ice were broken. She did not know what to say that would soothe that stricken little conscience, and yet guide it. All she could do was to hold the sobbing child tight.
It was one of those beautiful days in spring when everything seems careless and fond. The trees rustled around them as if hushing the voice of sorrow. The flowers looked up with bright faces; the indulgent sunshine shed its broad light. Everything seemed so much in contrast with the grieving child that Meg could think of nothing but to set herself to make that little pale face smile again. The child used in her happier moments to be fond of playing a game of shop. Meg excelled in mimicking the various customers coming to buy. Taking her ribbon now from her throat she set it up for sale, and became in turns the querulous customer, the fat fussy customer, the French customer. As she gesticulated, shaking her fingers up in the air, shrugging her shoulders, and talking in French, bargaining, vowing it was trop cher, she acted her part so vividly that Elsie forgot her sorrow, and at last broke out into a laugh.
From that day Elsie clung to Meg. The girls continued to abstain from referring to the incident of the diamond, and Miss Pinkett was elaborately kind; but Elsie was reminded of her sin by the emphasis of absolution around her. She still shrank from the companionship of other girls. With Meg alone she was forgetful of the past. The tie between them was recognized, and during the constitutional walks of the schoolgirls Elsie was allowed to leave her place among the younger ones and walk with her friend. These walks now lay toward the country, away from the village, where an outbreak of scarlatina was raging. In the blue-rimmed land, with its misty embattlement of downs outlined against the sky, through the shade and flicker of woods, through lanes sweet with the bravery of floral walls, the girls walked; and to Elsie Meg became the mouthpiece of nature. Those walks in the countryside were at this time the happy hours of Meg's life. The sensitive little hand in hers, that responded so quickly to her own delight, helped the inspiration that came to her from the illusive cloudland overhead, from wooded aisles, spread with wild flowers, voiced with notes of birds and buzz of insects.
This part of Meg's school-life came to an abrupt conclusion. One morning Elsie did not come down to breakfast. That evening she had a little fever, and the child's throat was sore. The doctor came, and the word "scarlatina" was whispered. In a few days the school was empty of the girls. Meg alone remained as usual. Every precaution to prevent infection was taken by Miss Reeves, and Elsie was isolated.
A new anxiety now sprang up in Meg's heart. Her thoughts were ever in the room at the top of the house, with the heavy curtains drawn before the door, from which distilled an acrid smell of disinfectants. Often Meg crept upstairs and listened. She watched every day for the doctor, to ask how Elsie was. The answers were always vague. In a few days the crisis would come. There was a tantalizing mystery in these replies, always followed by the injunction not to go near the child.