Miss Fleet fell on her knees, and Phyllis clasped her governess’s hand and looked up into her face.
What Miss Fleet said aloud was quite comprehensible to Phyllis and soothed her very much. She asked God that the sick children might recover, and she spoke of them with affection and again called them Phyllis’s friends. But what she did not say aloud was perhaps the most earnest part of her prayer, for in that she asked God to forgive her for not being as kind and sympathetic to Phyllis and to the Rectory children as she might have been, and she implored of God most earnestly the precious, most precious life of the only child.
That day a telegram reached Squire Harringay in Edinburgh. It was from the governess this time, and its purport was so grave that he decided to return home that day. He turned to the friend with whom he was transacting business and said:
“I have just had rather a nasty shock. You know, of course, that I have only one child, my little Phyllis, the apple of my eye, as you may well understand. Well, some children, friends of hers, have contracted a very bad sort of scarlet-fever, and she has been exposed this morning to direct infection. I hope that God will be merciful, and that the child may have escaped. But I am best at home, Lawson, and will leave here by the next train.”
Early the next morning Phyllis was made happy by the arrival of her father. He could not pet her too much, nor look at her too often, nor make enough fuss about her. Phyllis wondered why every one was now so kind, and why the children of the Rectory were spoken of as her dear little friends, not only by Nurse and Miss Fleet, but by every one in the house.
“But they were scarcely my friends. I mean—I mean,” said Phyllis as she sat on her father’s knee that evening—“I mean that I love them most awfully, but Fleetie did not wish me to love them. She would not have called them my friends; she did not until they got ill.”
“When they recover you shall see plenty of them,” said Mr Harringay; “and now, my darling, let us talk of something else.”
But Phyllis was not happy unless she was allowed to talk of the Rectory children. She told her father everything—all about that picnic tea in the attics, and poor Rosie’s longing for the rocking-horse and the baby-house.
“Could not they be sent to her—couldn’t they, Father? She would be so glad to have them; even if she was ill and her throat was sore, she could look at the rocking-horse and perhaps play with the baby-house.”
“No, no,” said the Squire. “No, no; we will keep them until she is well. But I will tell you what, Phyllis; we will have that baby-house down to-morrow, and you shall furnish it in the nicest and most fashionable style. You and Miss Fleet shall go out in the afternoon and buy new furniture for the entire house.”