“She could not feel,” reasoned Lena, with contempt.
“I don’t know,” said Lily, knitting her brows. “It’s not all make believe! I do love my Rosamunda Rowena, and she loves me, and I shall tell her not to be jealous of this dear Betsinda. For, do you know, when Rosamunda was ill in the Red Sea, father carried her up and down on deck, and made her a dear little deck chair.”
“But she is not alive. She couldn’t be,” sighed Lena. “I like my Ben and my kangaroo! Oh, I do want to go back to my kangaroo!”
“And does Lily want to go back to her riki-tiki?” asked Lily’s father, lifting a little girl on each knee, so that they might be vis-à-vis, when certainly his own had the advantage in beauty, as she answered, leaning against him, “Granny’s better than riki-tiki!”
For which pretty speech some of the ladies gave her much credit; but her father, with a tender arm round her, said, “Ah! you are a sentimental little pussy-cat! Is anything here as good as Carrigaboola? Eh, Lena?”
But Lena resolutely shook her carrots; but kept silence, while Bernard turned over the leaves of a great book of natural history, till as a page was displayed with a large kangaroo under a blue-gum tree, with a yellow wattle tree beside him, her lips quivered, her face puckered, and she burst into an uncontrollable fit of crying; “Oh! I want to go home, home! Sister, Sister, take me home!”
Angela was in a minute beside her, took her within loving arms, and carried her off.
CHAPTER XXIV—CRUEL LAWYERS
“Tender companions of our serious days,
Who colour with your kisses, smiles and tears,
Life’s worn web woven over wasted ways.”—Lowell.
There was a good deal of worry and anxiety for some little time, while correspondence was going on about Henry Merrifield’s will, and in the meantime Angela decided to board with Miss Prescott, since her charge was certainly much better in health there; and besides, as Mrs. Bernard Merrifield was naturally at Clipstone, it became the head quarters of her husband, though he made many excursions to his own people, and on business affairs to Sir Ferdinand Travis Underwood in London.