“They got to the door, and suddenly my darling turned,—O ma’am, it’s the best thing in my whole life to remember that! Of her own accord she turned and came back to me, and said she,—
“‘Don’t think, Sally, that I’m not sorry to say good-by. Of course I can’t be sorry to find my own mamma and my right home, but I’m sorry to leave you.’
“And then she put her arms round my neck and kissed me just as she had done when I took her home that night from Jacopo’s, six years before; and then she went away, and the sunshine, it seemed to me, went out of the door with her, and has never come back since.”
The poor little surgeon of the dolls stopped speaking, and cried very quietly, as those cry who are not used to have their tears wiped away, or their sorrows comforted.
I wanted to say that Lady Jane seemed to me a heartless little piece, who cared for nothing in the world but herself, and wasn’t worth grieving for; but I felt there would be no comfort for her in thinking that there had never been any thing worth having in her life. Far better let her go on believing that for six years she had sheltered an angel at her fireside.
At last, when I saw her tears were ceasing to flow, I said, “And when did you see her again?”
“Oh, I have never seen her since that day. I think she pitied me too much to come back and give me the sorrow of parting with her over again. No, I have never seen her, but her mother sent me five hundred pounds.”
“And so she ought,” I said impulsively. “It was little enough for all you had done.”
Surgeon Sally looked at me with wonder, not unmixed with reproach, in her eyes.