“I am devoted to the country,” continued the mother; “there is no place like the country for me.”
“So I think, too,” replied Sibyl. “I love the country. We’ll have all the very poorest people down here, won’t we, mother?”
“What do you mean?”
“All the people who want to be made happy; Mr. and Mrs. Holman, and the other faded old people in the almshouses that I went to see one time with Miss Winstead.”
“Now you are talking in your silly way again,” replied Mrs. Ogilvie. “You make me quite cross when you talk of that old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Holman.”
“But, mother, why aren’t they to be rich if we are to be rich? Do you know that Mrs. Holman is saving up her money to buy some of the gold out of father’s mine. She expects to get two hundred pounds instead of one. It’s very puzzling, and yet I seem to understand. Oh, here comes Mr. Landlord with the tea-things. How inciting!”
The table was spread, and cake, bread and butter, and fruit provided. Lady Helen and Rochester came back. They both looked a little conscious and a little afraid of Sibyl, but as she turned her back on them the moment they appeared, and pretended to be intensely busy picking a bouquet of flowers, they took their courage in their hands and came forward and joined in the general conversation.
Lady Helen elected to pour out tea, and was extremely cheerful, although she could not help reddening when Sibyl brought her a very large marguerite daisy, and asked her to pull off the petals and see whether the rhyme came right.
“What rhyme?” asked Lady Helen.
“I know it all, shall I say it to you?” cried Sibyl. She began to pull off the different petals, and to repeat in a childish sing-song voice:—