"You silly little boy!" interrupted a little girl who was a year younger than her brother, "you know poor aunty's not well. That's why she don't laugh. You'd cry, you'd be very naughty if you felt bad like aunty Mary."
"You little darlings!" cried the girl as she pressed them to her with warm affection and kissed them.
"But oh, Aunty Mary," continued Bobby, who had a great taste for philosophical disquisitions, and was especially fond of adducing arguments to prove the fallacy of the doctrine as regards retributive justice, which those in authority over him tried to inculcate into his acute little mind. "But oh, Aunty Mary, I believe that Anne (the cook) is an awful bad woman, and yet she laughs very loud."
"She isn't bad, Bobby!" emphatically denied the sister.
"She is! doo know, aunty," and he spoke in a tone of mysterious confidence, "doo know—mummy told them not to tell me; but I know—Anne drowned all the poor baby dogs. There was six of them. Isn't she very bad to kill all the poor little baby dogs, aunty?"
To the surprise of the children, Mary's response was a flood of hysterical tears. Weakened by her illness, and in the early stage of convalescence, she could not contain her feelings, and the innocent words of the babies pierced her heart with bitter memories.
At this moment the mother of the children approached the group.
"Oh, mummy!" cried the puzzled Bobby running up to her, "poor Aunty Mary's so bad. She's so sorry because the little baby dogs is killed."
Mrs. White was an active pretty little woman in a widow's cap. Her face had a calm serenity in it, a great amiability which was yet free from weakness, and which at once fascinated anyone who looked at her.