The girl’s cheek flushed to a pale, quick crimson, then faded slowly.
“She is very good to me. I am a great trouble. You know I am not her own. It is very hard for her that I can’t support myself.”
Gypsy said something just then, in her innermost thought of thoughts, about Aunt Jane, that Aunt Jane would not have cared to hear.
“If I could only earn something!” said Peace, with a quick breath, that sounded like a sigh. “That is hardest of all. But it’s all right somehow.”
“Peace Maythorne!” said Gypsy, in a little flash, “I don’t see! never to go out in the wind and jump on the hay, and climb the mountains, and run and row and snowball,—why, it would kill me! And you lie here so sweet and patient, and you haven’t said a cross word all the while you’ve been telling me about it. I don’t understand! How can you, can you bear it?”
“I couldn’t, if I didn’t tell Him,” said Peace, softly.
“Whom?”
“God.”
There was a long silence. Gypsy looked out of the window, winking very hard, and Peace lay quite still upon the bed.
“There!” said Gypsy, at last, with a jump. “I shall be late to school.”