“I must finish my drawings quickly, little Allumette,” said Cora, next time the child was called in for a sitting, “for I shall be going away very soon; and we have let the house to some friends, who want it very much.”
And then it suddenly came into the child’s mind that this beautiful holiday was over. She would have to go back to her match-selling in the streets; and for a time there would not be even her gentleman coming and going, for Mr. Clayton had been called away on some important business latterly, and though he had come home for a few days when his wife was ill, he had gone away again, and might be detained some little while.
Great tears gathered slowly in the child’s eyes. She tried to keep furtively brushing them away, but they would not be altogether hidden, and when Madge came dancing in she saw them there and guessed their source.
“But we won’t forget you, little Allumette,” she said kindly, “I have thought sometimes about you. I’ve got some plans in my head. Allumette, have you ever seen the country—the real country, where the fields are full of buttercups and daisies, and there are woods and birds and cows and farms?”—and Madge plunged into a description of the sights and sounds of rural country life, whilst Allumette listened with a rapt expression that was instantly caught and transferred to paper by the delighted Cora.
“Well, Allumette, if you have not seen such things, you shall some day. I shall look out for a nice farmhouse or cottage, where the woman will take you in for a few weeks, and some day I shall send for you, and you shall come down in the train and have a real good holiday, and go on cultivating those roses in your cheeks which we are teaching to bloom there now. Will that make up to you for going back to the streets for a little while?”
The child’s face was answer enough. With such a prospect in view she dreaded nothing, could bear with courage and equanimity the life of the dusty streets. So through the last days she kept a brave face, and when she saw the beautiful picture-books and the clothes she had had given her made up into a parcel for her to take home, it seemed like an earnest of those joys that were to come.
Tears swam in her eyes as she said good-bye, and was led away by the gardener’s wife who was to take her back; but she held them bravely in check, saying to herself—
“I shall see them again, I shall see them again. Miss Madge said she would not forget.”
