"Oh, Miss Laura, what a tall, lovely girl you are!" exclaimed Nannette, looking at her affectionately and turning her around. "Who dresses you, dear? and who brushes your beautiful hair? I have been lost without you."
"I am my own maid, Nannette, and you will have to wait upon mamma in future, or knit stockings for all the poor people. Do I not look well dressed? Ah! here is my dear Fido. What a great big creature he has become! And, oh! my dear Nannette, how are all the birds? and where is Polly?
"Welcome! welcome!" screamed Polly, in reply.
Laura took Kathie about from room to room till the child was almost bewildered; but so modest and refined was she by nature, that the grandeur did not dazzle her. She was just the same simple, quiet child of the woods, with a heart-sick and homesick longing to return to her own poor home; and it was not many days before Laura and Lady Idleways saw that the little wood-violet was drooping.
Kathie had been allowed a room next to Laura's, and each day Lady Idleways gave them lessons together. They walked, they rode, they gathered flowers. Kathie was teaching Laura to knit, and Laura was teaching Kathie many little nice ways about herself; and Laura was all brightness and energy—a veritable sunbeam, as all in the castle said; but Kathie grew quieter and sadder, and one day Laura found her unable to rise from her bed. In alarm she went to her mother.
"Mamma, Kathie is ill; her head is hot, and she says strange things to me, and she moans as if in pain."
Lady Idleways found the child truly ill, and she had to forbid Laura's even seeing her, for she knew not but that her fever might prove to be contagious.
Nannette shook her head wisely, and took her place at the bedside, as if now she had indeed some thing to occupy her.
Laura was lost without her companion, but made fresh bouquets and sent them in every morning to her, and was always ready at the end of the long hall to wait upon Nannette, that she might not leave her charge a moment. Lady Idleways sent for a physician, and his face looked grave when he came from Kathie's bedside.
"What is it, mamma?" asked Laura, as, with her books and Fido, she sat in the embrasure of the large hall window, waiting for the doctor's decision.