“This is my sister, Miss Crawford—Aunt Kate, to you always; who has been like a mother to my children—”
Aunt Kate bent over from her tallness and gave her a perfunctory kiss. Zay clasped both arms around her.
“Oh, isn’t it queer,” with a musical ripple. “You certainly were a princess in disguise at school, and some of the girls said you were my double to tease me; but I don’t think we look very much alike; do you, papa?”
She raised her radiant face with the pearly complexion, bewitching mouth and shining eyes. Marguerite looked rather pale and cold with the strangeness.
Then they went up to the mother’s room, but Aunt Kate paused at the door and turned in another direction. Zay and Willard followed her. Marguerite went to her mother’s arms and for many seconds neither spoke.
“What a strange, long waiting without any hope,” said the father at length. “I have often thought what Marguerite would be like if she had lived, and it always was impressed upon me that she would be like her mother. If I could have wished it—”
The child raised her head. The dark lashes were beaded with tears.
“I am sorry not to be as beautiful,” she said, with great humility. “I must make up any deficiency by my love and devotion. Oh, it seems as if I had gone into some divine country when love filled the very atmosphere.”
She held out her hand to her father who crushed it in a tender clasp.
“But you are looking pale and weary, mother.” What a sweet word it was to say when it was true.