Aunt Faith laughed. "My dear, you ought to have had half a dozen brothers and sisters!" she said. "An only child grows up too fast, especially where, as in your case, the companionship with father or mother is close and intimate. No doubt your dear father did his best to grow down to your age, when you were little; but he did not succeed, I fear, so you had to grow up to his. Was not that the way?"
Margaret nodded thoughtfully. "I remember his playing horse with me!" she said. "Poor dear Papa! I asked him to play, and he said in his deep, slow way, 'Surely! surely! the child must have play. Play is necessary for development.' And then he sat and looked at me, with his Greek book in his hand, as if I were a word that he could not find the meaning of. Oh! I remember it so well, though I must have been a little tot. Then he got up and said, 'I will be a horse, Margaret! Consider me a horse!' and he gave me the tassels of his dressing-gown, and began to amble about the room slowly, among the piles of books. Oh, dear! I can see him now, dear Papa! He made a very slow horse, Aunt Faith, and I felt, in a baby way, that there was something awful about it, and that he was not meant to play. I think I must have dropped the tassels pretty soon, for he came to a great book lying open on a chair, and forgot everything else, and stood there for an hour reading it. I never asked him to play again, but we used to laugh over it when we were big—I mean when I was big, and had grown up to him a little bit."
Mrs. Cheriton laid her hand on the girl's head, and smoothed her hair tenderly.
"You must have been lonely sometimes, dear?" she said.
"Oh, no; never, I think. You see, I learned so many things that I could play by myself, and it never troubled Papa to have me in the room where he was writing; I think he rather liked it. I had the waste-paper basket; that was one of my chief delights. I might do what I wanted with the papers, if I only put them back. So I carpeted the room with them, and I laid out streets and squares, and had the pamphlets for walls and houses. Or I was a queen, with a great correspondence, and all the letters were brought to me by pages in green and gold, and when I read them (this was before I could really read, of course), they were all from my baby sister, and they told of all the lovely things she was seeing, and the wonderful countries she and Mamma were travelling in. Aunt Faith, I never see a waste-paper basket now, without feeling as if there must be a letter for me in it."
"Was there really a baby sister, dear?"
"Yes, oh, yes! she died with Mamma, only a few days after her birth,—little Penelope! It seems such a great name for a tiny baby, doesn't it, Aunt Faith? But it is a family name, Papa told me."
"Yes, indeed, many of the Montforts have been named Penelope. You remember the poor Aunt Penelope I told you about, who made the unhappy marriage; and there were many others."
"Oh, that reminds me!" said Margaret. "Aunt Faith, you promised to tell me some day about Aunt Phoebe. Don't you remember? We were speaking of these white rooms, and you said it was a fancy of Uncle John's to have them so, and you thought he remembered his Great-aunt Phoebe; and then you said you would tell me some time, and this is some time, isn't it, Auntie dear?"
"I cannot deny that, Margaret, certainly. And I don't know why this is not a very good time; the twilight is soft and dusky, and Aunt Phoebe's story ought not to be told in broad daylight."