“I can guess how it happened, my dear. You were not old enough to be made her friends, and you could not understand quiet sorrow.”
“To think we should have said she was cross!”
“That was wrong, because it was disrespectful. You see, my dear, when grown people are in trouble, you young ones can’t enter into their feelings, nor always even find out that anything is amiss; and you get vexed at there being a cloud over the house, and call it crossness.”
“Grown-up people are sometimes cross, aren’t they?” said Bessie. “Nurse is; and I heard Papa say Aunt Alice was.”
“We have tempers, certainly,” said Miss Fosbrook; “and unless we have conquered them as children, there will be signs of them afterwards; but very few people, and certainly no children, can tell when grave looks, or words sharper than usual, come from illness or anxiety or sorrow; and it is the only way to save great grief and self-reproach to give one’s own faults the blame, and try to be as unobtrusive and obliging as possible.”
“And I am older now, and can understand,” said Bessie; “but then, it is Susie that is right hand, and does everything.”
“There’s plenty in your own line, Bessie—plenty of little kindly services that are very cheering; and above all—”
“What?”
“Attending to your Mamma’s troubles will drive away your own grievances. Only I will not talk to you any more now, for I want you to go to sleep; if you lie awake, you will be tired to-morrow, and that will incline you to be fretful.”
“Fretful to-morrow!”