She looked from the brother to the sister as she spoke. May met her dark eyes with an eager expression in her blue ones; her thoughts had flown to Mrs. Dicker, who had said she had had to fight selfishness and it hadn't been easy.
"I think you are a very extraordinary girl," said Donald, "and very old for your age."
"I didn't know I was extraordinary," Josephine replied, her pale cheeks flushing slightly, "but I dare say I am old for my age—I've never seen much of other children, you know."
The conversation then turned to her life in India, and, after a while, to the war. May and Donald were interested in all Josephine could tell them concerning military matters, and found her an entertaining companion. They were surprised when the supper gong sounded; the evening seemed to have flown.
"Josephine is a nice, well-mannered child," Miss Basset remarked to her brother later, after the young people had gone to bed, "but I do not think she has very acute feelings. She could talk of her father without even shedding a tear."
The old lady stole noiselessly into her little niece's room the last thing before she went to bed herself, and heard, by her regular breathing, that she was sleeping. Shading the lighted candle she was carrying with her hand, she bent over her.
Josephine moved her head uneasily, and began to talk in her sleep.
"Good-bye, daddy, good-bye!" she murmured. "Yes, yes, I promise! I will be brave, I will!"
"Poor, dear child!" murmured Miss Basset; "I believe I've done her an injustice—I dare say she feels more than she shows."
She stole away noiselessly as she had come. Every night since war had been declared she had prayed for the soldiers and sailors serving their country, but never so earnestly as she did that night. Josephine's arrival seemed, somehow, to have brought the war near—very near home.