"I didn't mean to make her cry," Bob answered. "I call her a great baby!"
"She's quite a little girl, of course," said Rose, who, being two years her cousin's senior, felt almost grown up in comparison to her, "but I don't consider her at all babyish. See how little fuss she made when her mother left!"
"I don't believe she cared—not much, heard mother say so to Jane; she said Mavis was singing a few hours after Aunt Margaret had gone, and people don't sing if they're sad."
Rose did not argue the point. Instead, she went upstairs in search of Mavis, whom she found in her bedroom, sitting on a chair by the window in the dark.
"What are you doing, Mavis?" she asked.
"Nothing," Mavis answered, "only thinking, and—and wishing that mother had left me in London with Miss Tompkins. I never guessed Bob wanted to go this afternoon, I never thought that I was taking his place!"
"It was very selfish and unkind of him to speak as he did, and father would be very angry if he knew he had done so. Think no more of it, Mavis. You haven't been crying, have you?"
"No," Mavis answered. "I've been praying," she added, after a minute's pause.
"Praying?" Rose was surprised. "But it isn't bedtime," she said, "I always say my prayers night and morning, don't you?"
"Yes, and odd times besides, whenever I feel I want to. It—it comforts me. It's so nice to think Jesus is always near to hear one, isn't it, and to remember He understands what other people can't? I expect Bob thinks it was very selfish of me to go to Oxford with Uncle John—"