"I've looked forward to your comin' like to an operation. I've thought you might laugh at her pictures, 'cause young folks are so cruel, and they don't know! Let me cry, Mr. Sidney. Don't mind! You've given me the first happy moment I've known since she left me. I was the only one she had, even to go to picture galleries with her, and my bones ached 'cause I was a stupid thing, and she had wings just like a little spirit o' light."
Philip's lashes were moist again.
"I wish I had been here to go with her," he said.
Eliza lifted her streaming eyes. "Would you 'a' gone?" she asked, and allowed Phil to raise her gently to her feet.
"Indeed, I would," he answered gravely, "and we should have lived together, and worked together."
"Oh, why couldn't it 'a' been! Why couldn't it 'a' been! What it would 'a' meant to her to have heard what you said just now about her pictures!"
Phil's hands were holding Eliza's thin shoulders, and her famished eyes were drinking in the comfort of him.
"I have an idea that we ought not to believe that we could make her happier than she is," he said, with the same gravity.
"I know," faltered Eliza, surprised; "of course that's the way I ought to feel; but there wasn't ever anything she cared much about except paintin'. She"—Eliza swallowed the tremulous sob that was the aftermath of the storm—"she loved music, but she wasn't a performer."