"FEAR DWELLS NOT HERE"
LUNCH was had in the tiny dining-room on the other side of the passage. Christina, accustomed to her simple nursery menage, always enjoyed her midday meal with Miss Bertha. She was peculiarly susceptible to pretty things. Miss Bertha's fine linen damask tablecloth, the quaint old sugar bowls and salt cellars in their crimson glass and cut silver mounts, the old-fashioned silver, and the pretty flowers that always graced her table, delighted Christina quite as much as the roast chicken and apple tart, and the ripe pears that followed afterwards.
"When I grow up," she announced, "I shall have just such a house as this, Miss Bertha, and I shall have Nurse for my maid like your Lucy."
"Ah, I shall wish you a fuller house than mine," said Miss Bertha; with a little laugh and shake of her head. "It is very quiet and monotonous to live by yourself. When I was a young thing, I remember thinking that I never could do it, and, as each one of my relations began to leave me, I always prayed that I might be the next to go."
"To go where?" asked Christina with big eyes.
Miss Bertha pointed with a smiling face out of the window up to the blue sky.
Christina looked awed, and her friend said quickly:
"I am not so impatient now. This world is a nice place, Childie, and if you have no family or relations, you can have friends, and there are always some to be helped along the way."
"Like you help me and Dawn," said Christina gravely.
"Ah, there is Dawn! I told him I should bring you to see him after lunch. His aunt Rachael has gone away for the day. So we will go at once."