“I don’t want nothin’ more.” Dil looked up with a soft light in her eyes. “Mebbe by noon I’ll be hungry—I most know I will.”
“Yes, I hope so.”
It was such a long morning to Dil, so hard to sit round and do nothing. If there had been a baby to tend, or a room to tidy. She would have been glad to go to the kitchen and help prepare the vegetables. She was so used to work that she could not feel at home in idleness.
She went over to the woods with the children to please Miss Mary, who suggested it so gently. But some feeling—the long disuse of childhood—held her aloof. She could not join in their plays, but it was a pleasure to watch them. And how wonderful the woods were! The soft grasses with feathery heads, the mosses, some of them with tiny red blossoms not as large as a pin’s head. There were a few wild flowers left, and long trails of clematis wandering about; shining bitter-sweet, green chestnut burrs in clusters, the long, fringy blossoms in yellow brown still holding on to some of them. There were bunches of little fox grapes, too bitter and sour for even children to eat.
She sat down on a stone and almost held her breath. It was the real, every-day country, not Central Park. The birds sang at their own sweet will, and made swift dazzles in the sunshine as they flew from tree to tree. Could heaven be any better? But there was no pain nor sickness nor weariness in heaven. And she felt so strangely tired at some moments.
She used her utmost endeavors to eat some dinner. It had such an appetizing flavor. The little girl next to her, who had swallowed her supper so quickly last night, eyed it longingly.
“You can have the potato and the meat,” Dil whispered softly. That travelled down red lane, and still seemed to leave a hollow behind. It was like the hungry boys at home, and she smiled.
She sat under the tree again, and Miss Mary tried to persuade her to go and play, but she was gently obstinate.
“Miss Lawrence asked me specially to look after her,” she said to another of the attendants. “She looks like a little ghost; but whether she is really ill, or only dead tired out, I can’t decide. It’s so natural for children to want to play, but she doesn’t seem to care to do anything but mope. Yet she speaks up so cheerful.”
“Poor children! How hard some of their lives are,” and her companion sighed.