She looked up from her work, at a companion. Following her eyes, the old man started back.
In the woman grown, he recognised her at a glance. In the long silken hair, he saw the self-same curls; around the lips, the child’s expression lingering still. See! In the eyes, now turned inquiringly on Meg, there shone the very look that scanned those features when he brought her home!
Then what was this, beside him!
Looking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning there: a lofty something, undefined and indistinct, which made it hardly more than a remembrance of that child—as yonder figure might be—yet it was the same: the same: and wore the dress.
Hark. They were speaking!
‘Meg,’ said Lilian, hesitating. ‘How often you raise your head from your work to look at me!’
‘Are my looks so altered, that they frighten you?’ asked Meg.
‘Nay, dear! But you smile at that, yourself! Why not smile, when you look at me, Meg?’
‘I do so. Do I not?’ she answered: smiling on her.
‘Now you do,’ said Lilian, ‘but not usually. When you think I’m busy, and don’t see you, you look so anxious and so doubtful, that I hardly like to raise my eyes. There is little cause for smiling in this hard and toilsome life, but you were once so cheerful.’