"Robert and I understand each other. He gives me a look, and I give him one. We do not require to speak."
"I wonder how I ever came to breed such unfeeling, unsocial children. If I get 'yes' or 'no' from your brother now, it is the whole of his conversation; and as for yourself, Isabel, you are at that wearisome reading or writing the livelong day. I'll need the Crawfords, or some one, to talk to me, or I'll forget how to speak. Now where will I sleep them?"
"I suppose in poor Christina's room."
"Poor Christina! Yes, indeed! I have no manner o' doubt it is 'poor Christina' by this time."
"Mother! mother! do not spae sorrow to your own child. I can't bear it. I think she is very happy indeed. If she was not, she would have sent me word. It is poor Isabel, and it is happy Christina."
"Your way be it."
The next day the Crawfords came, and were installed in Christina's room. Mrs. Campbell was in one of her gayest moods, and she said to Isabel: "I am not going to live in a Trappist monastery, because Robert is too sulky to open his mouth to me. I'll be glad to hear the girls clacking and chattering, and whiles laughing a bit. God knows, we need not make life any gloomier than it is."
For two or three days, the Crawfords had the run of the house. Robert went away, "on another wild goose chase" his mother said, just before they arrived; and his mother's words were evidently true, for he came home with every sign of disappointment about him. He looked so unhappy, that Isabel, meeting him in the hall, said: "I am sorry, brother, very sorry."
"I know you are," he answered. "It was a false hope—nothing in it."
"I would stop looking."