“Thank God!” said Margaret. “When your heart dances, there is nothing left to wish.”
“But did not yours? Had you ever such a prospect before,—such a prospect of delicious pleasure for weeks together,—except perhaps when we caught our first sight of the sea?”
“Nothing can ever equal that,” replied Margaret. “Do not you hear now the shout we gave when we saw the sparkles on the horizon,—heaving sparkles,—when we were a mile off, and mamma held me up that I might see it better; and baby,—dear baby,—clapped his little hands? Does it not seem like yesterday?”
“Like yesterday: and yet, if baby had lived, he would now have been our companion, taking the place of all other friends to us. I thought of him when I saw Sydney Grey; but he would have been very unlike Sydney Grey. He would have been five years older, but still different from what Sydney will be at eighteen—graver, more manly.”
“How strange is the idea of having a brother!” said Margaret. “I never see girls with their brothers but I watch them, and long to feel what it is, just for one hour. I wonder what difference it would have made between you and me, if we had had a brother.”
“You and he would have been close friends—always together, and I should have been left alone,” said Hester, with a sigh. “Oh, yes,” she continued, interrupting Margaret’s protest, “it would have been so. There can never be the same friendship between three as between two.”
“And why should you have been the one left out?” asked Margaret. “But this is all nonsense—all a dream,” she added. “The reality is that baby died—still a baby—and we know no more of what he would have been, than of what he is. The real truth is, that you and I are alone, to be each other’s only friend.”
“It makes me tremble to think of it, Margaret. It is not so long since our home seemed full. How we used all to sit round the fire, and laugh and play with papa, as if we were not to separate till we had all grown old: and now, young as we are, here we are alone! How do we know that we shall be left to each other?”
“There is only one thing we can do, Hester,” said Margaret, resting her head on her sister’s shoulder. “We must make the most of being together while we can. There must not be the shadow of a cloud between us for a moment. Our confidence must be as full and free, our whole minds as absolutely open, as—as I have read and heard that two minds can never be.”
“Those who say so do not know what may be,” exclaimed Hester. “I am sure there is not a thought, a feeling in me, that I could not tell you, though I know I never could to any one else.”