“Under one of the trees, one of the shadiest.”
“Oh, dear—here comes Ailwin! I wish she would let us alone.”
Ailwin was crying too much to speak. She took the body from Mildred’s arms with a gentle force, kissing the little girl as she did so. She covered up the baby’s face with her apron as she walked away.
The children went among the trees to fix on a spot for the grave. They found more than one that they liked; but suddenly remembered that the ground was hard, and that they had no spade, nor any tool with which they could make a deep hole.
Oliver was greatly disturbed at this,—more than he chose to show when he saw how troubled his sister also was. After thinking for some time to no purpose,—feeling that he could not bear to commit the body to the foul flood, and remembering with horror how many animals were scratching up the earth all over the Red-hill, where the ground was not too hard, and how many odious birds of prey were now hovering in the air, at all hours,—after thinking over these things with a heavy heart, he begged Mildred to go home to Ailwin, and to ask Roger to come to him in the wood, to consult what must be done.
Mildred readily went: but she hardly liked to speak to Roger when she saw him. He was watching, with a sulky air, what Ailwin was doing, as she bent over the mattress. His eyes were red with crying; but he did not seem the more gentle for that. When Mildred had given her message, he moved as if he thought it a great trouble to go; but Mildred then suspected what was indeed the truth,—that he was unhappy at the child’s death, and was ashamed of appearing so, and put on a gruff manner to hide it. Seeing this, the little girl ran after him, as he sauntered away, put her hand in his, and said,—
“Do help Oliver all you can. I know how he would have tried to help you if George had been your little brother.”
“’Tis all the same as if he had been,” muttered Roger. “I’m sure I am just as sorry.”
“Are you, indeed?” said Mildred, her eyes now filling with tears.
Roger could not bear to see that; and he hastened away. Mildred found a great change when she looked on the baby’s face again. The eyes were quite closed, and Ailwin had tied a bandage round his head,—under the chin, and among the thick hair which used to curl so prettily, but which had hung straight and damp since he had been ill. He was now strangely dressed, and laid out straight and stiff. He did not look like Geordie; and now Mildred began to know the dreary feelings that death brings into families. She longed for Oliver to come home; and would have gone to see what he was about, but that she did not like to leave the tent and the body while Ailwin was busy elsewhere, which was now the case.