"And that is the look of a Maclahan," said her father. "Hark, I hear your—your mother calling!"
He left her. Christina's little soul was perturbed and miserable. She went back to the nursery and did some thinking by the nursery fire, then she laboriously traced out in big pencil letters, on a sheet of white paper, "Fear dwells not here," and pinned it to the wall over the mantelpiece. After that, she walked up and down the room holding her head as high as she could, and practising with patience and care the kind of look she fancied was upon the faces of the ladies in the picture gallery.
"If only," she murmured; "if only that was not our motto! Oh, if father only knew, if he only guessed—what would he do with me!"
She shut her eyes, and pictured in the olden days a castle, and all the household gathered round the gates. Soldiers were marching out guarding a prisoner, one who had disgraced her family by an act of cowardice, one who was to be banished outside for ever, whose picture in the gallery was to be taken down and burnt: the coward herself, sent out into the cold strange world to perish with hunger, disowned, cast out by her family! Some Spartan tales that she had read helped her to picture this scene with great reality. Then she tried to adapt it to her own day. What would happen if one day she brought disgrace upon the whole family by her fears?
Poor little Christina! Her vivid imagination made her very miserable, and Nurse wondered when dinner time came that she seemed to have no appetite.
[CHAPTER III]
"THEY SAY I'M CODDLING YOU!"
"WE will have a walk this afternoon," said Nurse; "the sun is coming out."
"Shall I see father and mother again to-day, do you think?"
"I can't tell you," said Nurse a little shortly.