"I dare say she may never have understood it properly."
"Oh, I do hope I shall see her again! You know the village people, Miss Bertha; will you tell them to stop her when she comes driving along, and keep her till I come and see her."
Miss Bertha promised, and Christina left her that afternoon full of new thoughts and projects for the good of the little stranger she had met so casually.
Dawn's departure to London was the next excitement; he came over to say good-bye in his usual good spirits.
"You'll see me with the spring," he assured every one. "Dad pants to be out of London when that comes, and as for me, I get the fidgets in school awful when the buds are coming out. It's in my blood, dad says!"
"Your dad is spoiling you," said Mr. Maclahan, who heard this speech. "You'll stick at nothing as you grow older, if you don't stick to lessons now."
Then Dawn's wonderful eyes became most pathetic.
"My mother died young," he said softly. "Dad says it was the lessons did it. He saw her teaching in a school when he was teaching drawing. She was born to be happy, dad says; he knew it when he looked into her eyes. But she was like a 'flower in the shade,' that's how dad says it; so he took her away to make her happy, and he did it for a year; but it was too late. She'd been worked too hard at lessons; and then God took her to make her happier still. And when she looked at me just before she left me, do you know what she said to dad? 'Keep him in the sunshine, darling; his mother has had too little of it!'"
There was absolute silence when Dawn finished speaking. Mrs. Maclahan had been pouring out tea, for Christina and Dawn were having tea in the drawing-room as a treat. She made a great clatter with the cups and saucers, a sign that she did not wish to speak, and Mr. Maclahan caught up Christina on his knee.
"Here is a little lassie who wants sunshine," he said playfully. "I wish she carried as much upon her face as you do, my boy!"