Miss Gibson was extra kind to Baby those days, and would nurse and talk to her for ever so long.
“Why, you’re making her a real baby again,” said Eileen. “She’ll be getting too lazy to walk. I suppose it’s because Mother’s away that you pet her so much.”
“Poor old Baby!” laughed Miss Gibson, “she won’t be a baby for ever, you know.”
“No, and sometimes I wished I’d died when I was a baby.”
“Why?” asked Miss Gibson, for she knew that Eileen was in one of her discontented moods, and would probably talk and talk till she talked herself all unconsciously out of it.
“Oh! ’cause there’s nothing much to live for, only learning old lessons and things that don’t interest you, and growing up and being disappointed, and—and all sorts of things.”
“Never mind, there might be a bright time coming.”
“No, there’s no bright time coming. People always say, ‘There’s a bright time coming.’ But it’s a very slow old traveller, for it never gets this far. ‘A bright time coming’——”
“Well, what about the time that Uncle came? That was a bright time.”
“Yes, but that’s all over now, and we might go all our lives waiting for a bright time that will never come,” and so, talking, grumbling, and arguing, she talked herself into quite a good temper again.