“My dear, you miss Grace and Clare very much, don’t you?”
“Yes, dear mother.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go to Richmond and enter the same school they are in?” she inquired, pushing aside the dark clustering curls from the child’s fair forehead, and looking wistfully into her face, which was suddenly shadowed by a cloud of grief or fear. “Say, would you not, my Margaret?”
The little red lip quivered, and the dark eyes melted into tears; but she answered by asking, softly:
“Do you want me to go, mamma?”
“I think, perhaps, it might be best that you should do so, my love.”
“Well, then, I will go,” she said, meekly, struggling to govern her feelings, and then, losing all self-control, she burst into a fit of irrepressible weeping; in the midst of which her father re-entered the room, and learning the cause of her emotion, said:
“Cease crying this moment, Madge. You shall not leave your mother.”
“But—sir, mamma prefers that I should go,” said the little girl, quickly swallowing her sobs and wiping her eyes, for she feared even more than she loved her father, though she loved him very much.
“Your mother prefers that you should go, only because she sees you look sad, and fears that you feel lonesome here without companions of your own age.”