“Don’t take on so,” she ventured to say presently; “and you’ll spoil your black. It’ll stain dreadful.”
But Lilac took no more notice than if she had not been there, and soon, feeling that she could do nothing, Agnetta left her and took her way home. She had accomplished something by her visit, though she did not know it, for she had made Lilac feel now that it really was true. Mother would not come back. She was alone in the world. There was no one, as Agnetta had said, “to mind.”
She began to understand it now, and the clearer it was the harder it was to bear. So she bowed her head on the table, amongst the black stuff in spite of Agnetta’s caution, and cried on. And presently another thing, which she had not realised till now, stood out plainly before her. She was to go away to-morrow and live at Orchards Farm. Orchards Farm, which she had always fancied the most beautiful place in the world, and beside which her own home had seemed poor and small! Now all that had changed, and the more she thought of it the more she felt that she did not want to leave the cottage. It had suddenly become dear and precious; for all the things in it, even the meanest and smallest, seemed full of her mother’s voice and presence. Orchards Farm was a strange country now, with nothing in it that her mother had loved or that loved her, and to go there would be like going still farther from her. Raising her eyes she looked round at the familiar room, at her mother’s chair, at her own little stool, at the plants in the window. They all seemed to say: “Don’t go, Lilac. It is better to stay here.” Must she go? Then suddenly she caught sight of the lilac crown lying dusty and withered in a corner. It reminded her of a friend. “I’ll ask Uncle Joshua,” she said to herself; “I’ll go early to-morrow morning and ask him. He’ll know.”
Joshua had a very decided opinion on the question placed before him next day: Could Lilac live alone at the cottage and take in the washing as her mother used to do?
“I can reach the line quite easy if I stand on a stool,” she said anxiously; “and Mrs Wishing, she’d help me wring.”
“Bless you, my maid,” he said, “you’re not old enough to make a living, or strong enough, or wise enough yet. The proper place for you is your Uncle Greenways’ house, till such time as you come to be older.”
“Mother, she always said, ‘Don’t be beholden to no one. Stand on your own feet.’ That’s what she said ever so often,” faltered Lilac.
The cobbler smiled as he looked at the slight little figure. “Well, you must wait a bit. If Mother could speak to you now, she’d say as I do. And you won’t be no farther from her at the farm; wherever and whenever you think of her and mind what she said, and how she liked you to act, that’s her voice talking to you still. You listen and do as she bids, and that’ll make her happier and you too.”
Joshua set to work again with feverish haste as he finished. He did not like parting with Lilac, and it was difficult to say goodbye. She lingered, looking wistfully at him.
“You’ll come and see me down yonder, won’t you, Uncle Joshua?”