As Cousin Mary spoke she closed the door quietly and walked up to Helen's bed. Then she struck a light and lit a small lamp that she carried in her hand. After this she made Helen lie down, shook up her pillow, and covered her up; and then, drawing a chair close up to the bedside, she sat down herself.
"Are you going to stop for a little while?" asked Helen with glistening eyes.
"For a little while, yes. Not for long, though; you ought to have been asleep hours ago."
"How can I go to sleep when I am so—so dreadfully unhappy?" Helen's eyes that had been glistening a minute ago were filled with tears, and her voice grew tremulous. "I hate being such a baby," she went on, dashing away the rebellious tears with an angry hand. "I never let her see me cry. Only—only, somehow, when any one is very kind like you are——"
"Silly child!" said Cousin Mary, taking the girl's hand, "don't you know that you are making your own troubles out of that sore little heart of yours?"
"My own troubles! You don't understand, or you wouldn't say that. Why should I do as she tells me? She isn't my mother. My father and I were happy before she came, and now even father doesn't love me. I met him on the stairs to-day and he asked me if I was sorry, and just because I said I wasn't he went on and never spoke another word to me. He didn't use to want me to be sorry, he wanted me to be happy."
"And yet you weren't always happy then, Helen."
"Oh, yes! I was; at least nearly always."
"Had you no troubles? Did nothing ever go wrong? Were there no tears?"
"Well, of course, sometimes things went wrong. But it was quite, quite different then."