“And you’ve found a fairy godmother, haven’t you? She is real, too, and lives in a beautiful big house and has a fairy child with golden curls. Oh, I wonder if she would have been glad to have you if you had been all bruised and broken and could never walk——”
“Oh, don’t,” cried Lilian. Would they have been glad to have her?
“Now, tell me about when you were a little girl and went to the stores to buy things for your mother and played ‘Ring around a rosy,’ and ‘Open the gate as high as the sky.’”
The child’s voice and manner had changed like a flash. She liked Lilian’s make-believe stories in some moods; then she wanted real children and their doings, children who wiped dishes and swept floors while their mothers sewed or cared for a little baby in the cradle. And the petty disputes, the spending of a penny in candy and dividing it round.
“They couldn’t all have pennies I suppose,” the child commented.
“Their mothers were too poor,” laughed Lilian, thinking how seldom she had the pleasure of being a spendthrift. And if she were ever so rich what could she do for Claire?
So they talked on and on until Edith came and said a young gentleman had called for Lilian—her brother.
She went through to the parlor. Yes, it was Willard, bright and smiling as if glad to see her.
“But how did you know I was here?” she asked.
“Oh, I was at Mrs. Barrington’s, and we had a long talk about you. Then she directed me. It is getting towards night and our beautiful day shows symptoms of coming rain.”