Winifred knew what she meant, and answered it.
“Mamma will miss me most,” she said. “Vi dear, I want you to do something for me. Will you come to see mamma as often as you can, and try to comfort her? She is fond of you, and she will like it. She hasn’t another little girl; but if you would come in and talk to her, and tell her things, and kiss her, and be fond of her, I am sure she would like it. She is fond of you, Vi.”
“I will, Winnie. I love your mamma a whole lot. I should like to come and see her and tell her things. But oh, Winnie, I can’t bear to think about it—it seems so sad and dreadful.”
“We won’t think about it, then, nor talk about it, if you don’t like. I haven’t talked to anybody else, Vi, and I don’t know—It is only what I fancy. I may—perhaps—be wrong.”
Violet took courage from this idea, which she eagerly seized upon. Children soon turn their minds from a subject which seems sad or painful.
“You have not told me your story yet, Winnie; and it is quite dark enough now.”
“Yes, and almost time to go down to watch the boys’ charade; but I will just tell you what it was, as I promised, because I think perhaps it would be easier to be good if we could always remember that little things matter just as much as big ones, and are really often harder to think of, and to do.”
Winifred paused a moment, whilst Violet settled herself to listen to the story.
“It isn’t a very long one, and I can’t tell it nicely like mamma; but it was about a little boy whom she once knew quite well—a nice little boy whom everybody was fond of, because he was so good-tempered and merry. His name was Frank, and he lived in a nice little house with his mother, and they were very happy.
“One day a pane of glass was broken in the green-house. It was Frank who had done it by accident, but he told a lie, and said he hadn’t. It was the first time he had ever told a lie, and it seemed a very little one, and he didn’t think much about it. But then after he had told one story he told another, and then another, and at last his mother found him out, and was so shocked and grieved about it that she sent him to school.