There was a little figure crouching under one of them, evidently that of a child, and a child in sorrow, for the face was hidden by a pair of tiny hands and the little frame was shaken with sobs. It looked like a blot in the dazzle the sunset radiance had cast over Margaret's sight. But the child was at her feet; her heart was moved for its little trouble. She stooped to ask about the sorrow, and with a sudden shock recognized in the weeping little one her own Laura. The child's dress was in disorder; the pretty, fair hair was uncovered by hat or bonnet and flying wildly over her face and neck; her cheeks were stained with tears which seemed to have been flowing abundantly; her little hands were red and sore.
She looked up, and a faint smile came into her weary little face as she recognized her mother. "I thought you were never coming back, mamma," she said in a voice so sad and low that it pierced her mother's heart. "I am glad you're come, because now perhaps I sha'n't always be naughty."
"Naughty! my little Laura naughty? Who says so?" The tears were in Margaret's eyes, and a passion of penitence and love was welling up in her heart. It was like the opening of a sealed-up fountain. All the sweet motherliness that untoward circumstances seemed to have stifled in Margaret's heart awoke suddenly at the sight of her daughter's sorrow. She kissed the little flushed face, smoothed back the disordered hair, and lulled the child to rest in her arms with the pretty baby-language that mothers know. And at first the little Laura looked surprised, then her tears ceased, she clasped her arms round her mother's neck, and into the dark, wide-open, pensive eyes there came a look of rest.
So they remained for a few moments—the mother and the child, with the soft, cool yellow sand around them and the westering seas before them; Margaret thinking only of these little clinging arms, of this sweet child-love—of the blessing that was still left her; the little one rejoicing, with the unreasonable delight of childhood, in the soft pressure of her mother's arms. She had always been given a morning and evening kiss, but this warm, protecting tenderness was, she could not tell why, something new to her.
She looked up languidly at last from her mother's breast where her head had been resting. "Jane says I've been very naughty, mamma," she murmured; "she whipped me for telling a story, but I know I didn't take the sugar."
Laura's tears began to break out afresh at the remembrance, but her little simple story had aroused her mother, and indignation began to mingle with sorrow in her heart. She started up: "Who whipped you, Laura? Jane? How could she have dared to do such a thing? There! there! my sweet," for her vehemence had alarmed the child, "dry your eyes. Mamma will never leave her little darling again; no one else shall have anything to do with Laura."
Laura's tears gave place to a smile of contentment. "Yes, mamma dear, it will be nice. I cried the day you went to London, a long time ago, and Jane said it was naughty, and she locked the door and left me by myself—oh, such a long time! And she said you had gone away because I was tiresome, and you didn't love me one little bit; and I thought"—Laura wound her arms tightly round her mother's neck—"I thought perhaps you'd never come back, and I was always to stay with Jane. And oh, mamma, I was looking at the sea to-night—you know gardener's little boy fell in, and when he came out I saw him; he was white and quite cold, and they put him in the churchyard—and I thought it would be better to fall in like poor little Jimmy than to live with Jane."
"Poor little darling!" Margaret's tears were flowing fast. She rose from her seat, but she would not loosen the pressure of those tiny arms.
Laura put her hand up to her mother's face: "Mamma, you're crying now. Is it about Jane? Poor mamma! never mind."