"She is sick, Irene," he said. "Where is her room? Let me carry her there."
While he went upstairs with her she revived, and lifted her tired head from his shoulder to look into his eyes.
"I wish you were not going away, papa," she ventured to say.
"I can't stay on in the old places, where I have lived with your mother, without her," was the answer which came, and which was like giving her a key wherewith to unlock her father's heart, and so made the two nearer to each other than they had ever been before.
"Some time will you come back, and let me live with you?" she whispered, wondering at her own rashness.
"If you are good, dear, and learn to be womanly and helpful, and to take care of yourself, I will come back for you, or you shall come to me, and we will be together always."
No one knew with what passionate yet timid hope Agatha's little heart beat as she lay there alone on her strange, high bed. Womanly and helpful,—that was what he had said, and she would be just that. She would do all Aunt Irene said, and never mind how much she was watched, since watching might help to make her nearer right, and get her ready all the sooner to go to her father and be his comfort.
The very next day he left her. The death of his wife had seemed to sweep away all his old landmarks. He had been, hitherto, a quiet unadventurous man contented with his narrow routine of daily duty, which always brought him back to the tenderness of her welcoming smile. Now that smile was frozen for ever on her cold lips, and a strange restlessness possessed him. He had meant to stay a few days with Agatha in her new home, but he felt as if the inaction would drive him mad, so he hurried away; and a week afterward Aunt Irene showed Agatha his name in the passenger list of a European steamer.
It was June then, and the gay summer went on working its daily miracles round Agatha's quiet home. Bright birds sang to her, and gay flowers bloomed for her picking; and nature ran riot in a wood a quarter of a mile away, where the flowers asked no leave of Aunt Irene to blow, or the birds to sing. The child used to go there when her daily tasks were done, but she carried with her so sad a heart that nothing seemed to cheer her. She wondered what all the growing things were so glad about, in the summer weather, and, remembering an old phrase she had heard, she concluded it was because nature was their mother, and nature never died.