Here was a scrap of comfort. Mamma was at least alive enough to inquire for, and be anxious about her. She crept to the window and looked down to where Nellie stood, calling still, and turning her eyes in every direction.
"Here I am, Nellie, I'll come down," she answered, ran down the stairs, opened the door, and then, her courage failing her once more, stood still and peeped out.
Papa stood at the door of mamma's room, and saw her at once. A pale, tear-stained, miserable little face it was that met his eye, and stirred his pity.
"My poor little woman!" he said, holding out his hand to her: "why, how woe-begone you look. Have you been hiding because you were frightened about mamma? That was not worth while, and mamma has been asking for you, and every one looking for you this ever so long. Come and see mamma, she is better now, and looks like herself again."
Carrie came forward, still with hesitating steps and hanging head; and her father, taking her hand, led her into mamma's room.
Mrs. Ransom lay upon the sofa, looking very white still, but with a smile upon her lips, and her eyes bright and life-like as usual; and the timid glance which Carrie gave to her mother's face reassured her very much.
Still she felt so guilty and conscious, such a longing to confess all, and yet so ashamed and afraid to do it, that her manner remained as confused and downcast as ever.
Nellie stood behind her mother, leaning over the head of the couch, and looking troubled and anxious, but her face brightened when she saw Carrie.
Daisy, with the most solemn of faces, was seated in a little chair at mamma's feet, gazing silently at the pages of "Baxter's Saint's Rest," held upside down. Not one word could Daisy read, she barely knew her letters; but she had found Baxter in the little rack which held mamma's books of devotional reading, her "prayers books," Daisy called them; and believing any work she found there must be suitable to the day, and the state of mind she considered it proper to maintain while mamma was ill, she had possessed herself of it, and was now fully persuaded that she was deriving great benefit from the contents thereof.
"So you ran away from mamma," said Mrs. Ransom, caressing Carrie's hand as she buried her face in the sofa-pillows beside her mother's. "Did she frighten you so? What a poor foolish mamma it is to be so startled at such a harmless little thing as a mouse, is it not, dearie? I hope I should not have been quite so foolish if I had been well and strong. My poor Carrie!"