“Nay, Elfie, you little wretch; that was quite a good rose—not fair game,” and leaping up to give her chase in and out among the beds, they nearly ran against Janet returning with the letters, and saying “she was sorry to have been so long, but mother’s hoards were never easy places of research.”
Barbara came more slowly back, and looked somewhat as if she had had a sharper rebuke than she understood or relished.
Poor child! she had suffered much in this her first real trouble, and a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to come peeping and worrying.
Janet had given a most violent start when she opened the door of her mother’s bedroom where the davenport stood; and Janet much resented being startled; no doubt that was the reason she was so cross, thought Barbara, but still it was very disagreeable.
That room was the child’s also. She had been her mother’s bed-fellow ever since her father’s death, and she felt her present solitude. The nights were sultry, and her sleep had been broken of late.
That night she was in a slumber as cool as a widely-opened window would make it, but not so sound that she was not haunted all the time by dread for Armine.
Suddenly she was awakened to full consciousness by seeing a light in the room. No, it was not the maid putting away her dresses. It was Janet, bending over her mother’s davenport.
Babie started up.
“Janet! Is anything the matter?”
“Nothing! Nonsense! go to sleep, child.”