The scene came vividly before Meg’s eyes to-night, as she sat with the poor child close in her arms.
She bent her head in an agony of shame and sorrow.
How she had failed! how she had neglected, scolded, grown impatient with, laughed at, her little trust! Loved her, of course; but life was such a confusing, busy, quarrelling, pleasure-seeking kind of thing at Misrule, and she had forgotten so often, and been so taken up with her own affairs, that she had not had time to “be a mother” to her little sister.
“Oh, Poppet!” she said, in a voice full of passionate regret; and Poppet slipped her dear, thin [64] ]little arms around her neck and clung closer, as if she almost knew what the trouble was.
But presently the child fell asleep, and Meg stayed there, motionless, on the bed edge, looking down at the small, flushed cheeks, where the black lashes lay still heavy and wet.
There was a strange look of Judy about the little face to-night, and altogether it made Meg forget the visitors downstairs, Alan, Nell’s impatience, everything but the little dead mother and the knowledge that her place was not well filled. She thought of Bunty, sullen, hard, untruthful, and growing more so every day—Bunty, whose nature no one but Poppet had a key to, and even hers would not always turn.
If the little mother had lived, he would have been very different. Poor lad! perhaps he was unhappy too—he had been even more gloomy and silent than usual these last few days; she would go to him now, and try to get into his confidence by degrees.
She slipped Poppet’s little warm hand out of her own and put it softly on the pillow.
“Well, this is too bad of you,” said Nellie, putting her head into the door. “You’ve no regard for appearances, really, Meg. It’s an hour since you left the room, and I’ve been making excuses for you all the time. Why don’t you come down? There’s [65] ]only Esther and me to entertain them all, and Alan Courtney’s been looking at the photograph album for half an hour, and not spoken a word. You are too bad. Sitting here with Poppet all this time—she’s asleep too. Talk about spoiling the children!”
Meg got up, her eyelashes wet, her face very sweet in its new gravity.