Winifred was very much interested in the swallows. In the springtime she had watched them with the utmost absorption as they built their nests and hatched their chattering broods amid the many eaves and jutting lead-pipes of the old-fashioned manor-house in which she lived.
When the summer came, and the young birds had left the nests, she still fancied she knew “her swallows” from all the rest, and was always interested in their movements; fond of foretelling the weather according as to whether they flew high or low, and making stories about them and their cleverness which would rather have astonished an ornithologist.
And now that autumn was drawing on, the child watched them with an increasing sense of fascination, for she knew that it would not be very long before she lost her friends and playmates (for in her eyes they were friends and playmates), who would fly far, far away from England with the first approach of winter.
“I wonder why they want to go?” the child sometimes said. “I shall so miss them. I wish they would stay here always.”
Winifred was nine years old, but she was so small and thin that she hardly seemed so much; and yet her little face, with its large, thoughtful eyes, and grave, serious lips, looked almost older than a nine-year-old child’s should do.
She had been very, very ill last winter, so ill that nobody had thought she could get better; and even now, although the summer had brought a little strength to her limbs, and a little colour to her face, she was still very delicate, and her father and mother often looked anxiously into the deep eyes of their only little daughter, and wondered how long they would keep her with them, and if she would ever grow up strong and hearty like Charley and Ronald, her two big brothers.
Winifred did not know this; she only knew that she could not run about and play like other children, that she soon grew tired, and that it was much more pleasure to her to sit on the nursery window-seat and read a favourite story-book, or watch the swallows, than it was to romp and race about the garden and fields as the boys so loved to do. The little girl was not discontented; she was very happy in her own way, and was fond of being quiet, and indulging in her own dreams and fancies. She saw no reason why she was to be pitied.
A door opened softly, and without turning her head to look, Winifred knew that her mother had come in.
Nobody but mamma had such a soft, gentle step; nobody else seemed to bring into the room that kind of brightness and sweetness which Winifred always felt accompanied her mother’s presence. Sometimes the child would think to herself that it was like music and moonlight just to feel that mamma was near.
Mrs. Digby was a tall, graceful, sweet-faced mother—an ideal woman for a child’s love and worship, so gentle, so firm, so loving and sympathising.