“Do I comfort you, then, a little, my sweet love?” she asked.
“A little? Why, Polly, do you realize that you are my all now?”
Polly laid her cheek on her mother’s hand.
“We shall be happy together yet. You see if we are not. We—we only want time.”
Mrs. Pennington caressed the rough, brown curls; she could hardly see them for tears. Remembrance had brought back to her swiftly a vision of old, dead days, when her children had been little more than babies, and her husband had chided her, tenderly enough, for the most natural pride and love she had always had in her eldest born, her lovely little Christina. It gave her a pang now to recall the love she had lavished so freely, and that had given her back no love in return.
The queer little brown baby, Polly, had always crept very closely to her father’s heart. The wife had known this, but Robert Pennington had made no distinction in his affection for his children; he had been essentially a just man. There was a strong element of her father in Polly, and the mother’s heart was full of pride in the girl’s proud courage that fought not only against a first great sorrow, but against all the heavy difficulties that faced them now.
Polly’s influence was of far greater value than she had the least idea of herself.
Mrs. Pennington found herself unconsciously emulating the girl in courage and determination.
Sorrow such as hers would never be wholly shaken off; but despair could not live while she had before her eyes the daily example of Polly’s earnest resolution to live through her trouble; and Mrs. Pennington knew that the full weight of the girl’s hurt was something that was only revealed to her now day by day.
Though Hubert Kestridge had spoken no words and Polly had not even confessed the truth to herself, the mother was only too well aware of the pain that lay at the bottom of the cup of sorrow Polly had to drain. Life truly stretched before the girl, but it would be a long, long time before Winnie’s selfishness and treachery would be a forgotten thing. For neither Mrs. Pennington nor Polly deceived themselves about this marriage.