"Why, you silly little goose, it was poor Vonnie who had earache, not you! There was nothing for you to cry about! You must have been dreaming."
II
Lily never knew whether the night that she had fetched Nurse to come to Vonnie had witnessed the culminating episode in that series of giant nightmares, Vonnie's earaches—or whether it only stood out in her memory from the acute sensation of exquisite relief that it had finally afforded her.
At all events, it was after one of the earache nights that a dreadful thought first came to her.
What a good thing it would be if Vonnie were to die! Lily was horrified at her own wickedness, but dwelt upon this solution with a sort of unwilling fascination.
She knew instinctively that Vonnie would never grow up like other people—would never be able either to take care of herself, or to find people who would take care of her. She would never be very happy, she would always have earache, and be left out of treats, and chidden for being so slow.
Whereas, if Vonnie died, there was an end of earache, of scoldings, of everything that was unkind or unfair. She would go to Heaven, where everybody was perfectly happy for ever, and Lily herself would never mind anything again, if once she knew for certain that Vonnie was happy and taken care of, even though out of sight. It seemed a very simple solution, although God, to say nothing of Father and Mother, would certainly be very angry with her for thinking of such a thing.
Lily, affrighted, put the idea away from her, although it came back again when she once overheard Aunt Clo emphatically remarking that Vonnie would certainly never live to grow up.
Lily did not know of the devastating effect produced by Aunt Clo's unsolicited pronouncement.