“Poor little darling!” said Mrs. Richmond.
She kissed Nan, and nodded to Kitty to run up to Nan and take her hand.
“You are my sister, you know, and I love you already,” said Kitty; and so Nan went upstairs to bed.
Early the next morning, when the little girl felt that she had already only enjoyed her first sleep, she was awakened by some one pulling her rather violently by the arm. She looked up in astonishment. Just at first she could not in the least remember where she was, nor what had happened. Then it all rushed over her—her mother’s funeral of the day before, her own great misery, the change in her life. But she had scarcely time to realise these things, and certainly had not a moment to fret about them, when the eager voice of Kitty was sounding in her ears.
“Get up, please, Nan; dress yourself as fast as ever you can in the dark, and come into the schoolroom. If you are not very quick you will miss seeing the animals getting their breakfasts, and that is the best fun of the day. Now, be quick—be quick! I will come back again in a few minutes. I have lit the candle for you; here it is. Hot water? No; you must do without that. Fly—dash into your clothes, and be in the schoolroom in a quarter of an hour.”
Kitty disappeared, and Nan got up. She felt quite excited; she could not help herself. It was useless to pretend that she felt anything but a sense of rejoicing as she thought of the animals. When with human beings she must remember her mother, and her own suffering, and her great loss, but with the animals she could only rejoice. She scrambled into her clothes, making, it is true, a very sorry spectacle of herself.
“Sophia Maria, my darling,” she said to her doll, “you had better get warm into bed, and lie tucked up there while I am attending to the animals. I will never love them better than I love you, but I must see how they get their breakfasts. They are alive, Maria darling—they are alive; you understand, don’t you?”
Sophia Maria stared with her vacant smile at her little mistress.
“How good she is! she never frets,” thought the little girl; and then she went into the schoolroom, where a fire was lighted—a dull, dim-looking fire, which certainly gave forth no heat whatever just yet—and the gas was turned on.
“Is it not a good thing we have gas?” said Kitty.