Her brother wrote to her from time to time, sometimes on business matters, sometimes just a little brotherly note. There was a letter from him one morning which contained a sentence which puzzled Madge a good deal.
“I am glad you have remembered your promise to little Allumette at last. The poor little child has been looking very white and thin of late, but the country air will pull her up again. How happy she will be when she sees all the beautiful things about her. I have been sometimes afraid that those weeks at Hampstead rather unfitted her for the sharper battle of life she has to fight at home.”
“What can he mean?” said Madge, half aloud. And when she read the passage in the letter aloud, Lady Brook said—
“I suppose somebody else has given the child an outing, and your brother thinks it is you.”
“Oh, I suppose that is it,” answered Madge; “but I will ask Bertram when I write.”
Nevertheless, the letter was never written. For a moment Madge’s conscience had been uneasy, but the press of things crowding into her life quickly drove all thoughts of little Allumette out of it.
CHAPTER V.
DARK DAYS.
“Why, little Allumette! Where have all your roses gone? I thought you had learnt to grow them in Hampstead! What have you done with them now?”