The hour of the long day passed somehow.
If there was calm in Polly’s room, and despair more or less in poor Flower’s, the rest of the house was kept in a state of constant excitement. The same doctor came back again; doors were shut and opened quickly; people whispered in the corridors. As the hours flew on, no one thought of Flower in her enforced captivity, and even Polly, but for Maggie’s ceaseless devotion, might have fared badly.
All day Flower Dalrymple remained in her room. She was forgotten at meal-times. Had David been at home, this would not have been the case; but Helen had sent David and her own little brothers to spend the day at Mrs. Jones’s farm. Even the wildest spirits can be tamed and brought to submission by the wonderful power of hunger, and so it came to pass that in the evening a disheveled-looking girl opened the door of her pretty room over the porch, and slipped along the passages and downstairs. Flower went straight to the dining-room; she intended to provide herself with bread and any other food she could find, then to return to her solitary musings. She thought herself extremely neglected, and the repentance and sense of shame which she had more or less experienced in the morning and the memory of Dr. Maybright’s words and the look in has grave eyes had faded under a feeling of being unloved, forsaken, forgotten. Even David had never come near her—David, who lived for her. Was she not his queen as well as sister? Was he not her dutiful subject as well as her little brother?
All the long day that Flower had spent in solitude her thoughts grew more and more bitter, and only hunger made her now forsake her room. She went into the dining-room; it was a long, low room, almost entirely lined with oak. There was a white cloth on the long center table, in the middle of which a lamp burnt dimly; the French windows were open; the blinds were not drawn down. As Flower opened the door, a strong cold breeze caused the lamp to flare up and smoke, the curtains to shake, and a child to move in a restless, fretful fashion on her chair. The child was Firefly; her eyes were so swollen with crying that they were almost invisible under their heavy red lids; her hair was tossed; the rest of her little thin face was ghastly pale.
“Is that you, Flower?” she exclaimed. “Are you going to stay here? If you are, I’ll go away.”
“What do you mean?” said Flower. “You go away? You can go or stay, just as you please. I have come here because I want some food, and because I’ve been shamefully neglected and starved all day. Ring the bell, please, Fly. I really must order up something to eat.”
Fly rose from her chair. She had long, lanky legs and very short petticoats, and as she stood half leaning against the wall, she looked so forlorn, pathetic, and yet comical, that Flower, notwithstanding her own anger and distress, could not help bursting out laughing.
“What is the matter?” she said. “What an extraordinary little being you are! You look at me as if you were quite afraid of me. For pity’s sake, child, don’t stare at me in that grewsome fashion. Ring the bell, as I tell you, and then if you please you can leave the room.”
There was a very deep leather arm-chair near the fireplace. Into this now Flower sank. She leant her head comfortably against its cushions, and gazed at Firefly with a slightly sarcastic expression.
“Then you don’t know!” said Fly, suddenly. “You sit there and look at me, and you talk of eating, as if any one could eat. You don’t know. You wouldn’t sit there like that if you really knew.”