Eleanor Stellenthorpe looked stricken.
"Run along, my pets," she said in the accustomed formula, but in an inward voice that suggested restrained suffering.
She received Vonnie's kiss automatically, as she always did, but when Lily put her arms round her mother's neck, fearful of omitting the customary hug that she knew was always expected of her, Eleanor released herself gently. Slowly bowing her head, she at the same time raised her eyes and fixed them sorrowfully upon Lily's face, producing an extraordinarily poignant effect of silent reproach.
Philip kissed Lily once upon the forehead, instead of as usual, two or three times all over her face and said deeply:
"My poor little child! Good-night."
Lily went upstairs in tears, indescribably guilty.
She had been naughty again, and oh! how like God it was, to have arranged things like that. If Vonnie didn't get to bed and to sleep before the earache gained its hold, then they must both suffer through one of those black nights of misery that Lily so dreaded. But when one was asked whether one preferred to go straight to bed, or to sit up while Father was kind enough to read aloud, it was naughty and ungrateful to choose bed. So that God, having thus trapped one into naughtiness, was there all ready with His favourite punishment—the thing that He knew she dreaded most of all the punishments in the world—Vonnie's earache.
That night, the hand of God, as Lily saw it, was even heavier than usual. Vonnie's earache was agonizing.
Lily knew this, in the darkness of the night nursery, from the tiny, stifled moans that came from Vonnie's bed. Not a sound ever escaped her until the pain was almost unbearable, and even then Lily knew that she would never utter a spoken word, because the children were forbidden to speak after the light was put out.
Lily herself lay stiff and rigid in her bed, her hands clenched, her body quivering and sweating, with every faculty strained to its utmost in the intensity of her tortured listening. Each time that Vonnie's almost inaudible moan sounded, a pang went through Lily's whole frame. Every now and then she would discover that she was holding her breath, and find herself constrained to exhale it in a long, quivering, noiseless sob.