Winifred looked up into her mother’s face and smiled. Mrs. Digby pressed the little hand that was slipped into hers, and her eyes sparkled through a mist of tears as she smiled back.
Winifred walked home between her two brothers, who seemed very pleased and proud of their charge.
All three children were very merry and happy together, and Ronald built fine castles in the air of all the things they would do in the future, when Winnie should be strong and well again.
Charley, with all the hopefulness of a boy’s nature, joined in eagerly, and Winifred listened and smiled, and took her share in the talk, and she felt herself so strong and well that she wondered dreamily to herself whether she had made a mistake all this time, whether perhaps she would see the swallows go and come back again after all, without having herself to take an unknown journey into a far-off land.
As they neared the park-gates, Winifred made a suggestion:
“Let us go in and see little Phil. He will be so pleased; and then I can rest a little while.”
“Are you tired?”
“No; at least only a very little; but I should like to go and see Phil.”
“All right,” said Ronald; “come on.”
Phil’s couch was in the little garden to-day. The summer brightness had tempted him out.