Dolly’s voice was very low. “It isn’t black,” she said.
“But it has a black sash, and black trimmings,” said Mrs. Conway.
“Phyl’s is all black,” Dolly whispered.
“But what of that, my little girl?”
Dolly’s head pressed closer. “It seems as if I don’t care as much as Phyl,” she whispered, and one tear fell right over her gold-brown lashes and down her cheek.
Then the mother understood the frequent pain she had unknowingly caused the child by a small economy she had practised when the mourning was made.
Dolly had had a grey frock trimmed with blue, and at the time of Mr. Conway’s death it was almost new. Phyl’s blue and crimson and brown frocks had all been laid aside, and also Dolly’s other coloured ones. But the grey one the mother had told the dressmaker to take the blue from, and substitute black, and it would make a useful house-frock.
Years after when Dolly looked back to her childish days that trouble was clearest remembered of all. But she had said nothing then, for the mother had said it would “save a little.”
But to contemplate taking it to Australia with her broke down her fortitude, and for the first time Mrs. Conway understood what a real grief it had been.
[111]
]“To-morrow we will send it to Mrs. Jones for her little girl,” she said; “why didn’t you tell me before, darling?”