"They say the pain's cruel ... and for a poor little child, too!"
Lily put her fingers in her ears and cast herself upon the ground.
It was Vonnie they were talking about, and they said the pain was cruel—and no one would tell her anything, or let her go to Vonnie.
"I wish I was dead, oh, I wish I was dead!" sobbed Lily.
A child with an intense capacity for feeling can suffer to a degree that is beyond any degree of adult suffering, because imagination, ignorance, and the conviction of utter helplessness are untempered either by reason or by experience. Nothing in all Lily's life ever again held for her the bitterness of that afternoon in the potting-shed, when she had been sent out to be a good, happy little child, and play about in the sunshine.
After a long while, the housemaid Clara came and called her, and exclaimed with compassion at the sight of her when she appeared.
"Are you missing poor Miss Vonnie? There, never mind, dear, come along in now and have your tea."
Clara had tea with her instead of Nurse, and was very kind, and Lily, unable to cry any more, felt dumbly grateful to her and did not ask any of those questions which she felt sure that Clara would somehow contrive not to answer.
"Come and wash your face before you go downstairs," said Clara encouragingly, "so that your Mamma won't think you've been crying."
But Lily's mother was not in the drawing-room, when she went there with the traces of her tears carefully removed.