“Well,” she said at length, “at least you shall stay at home with her to-morrow; for all those ruffles can be done just as well there as here, and you shall carry them home with you. And you’d better go early this afternoon; there’ll be enough work to last you, and I can’t bear to think of her waiting for you, and wanting you, so many long hours. We’ll give her a little surprise.”
Mary Gordon did not speak for a moment. I think she was getting her voice steady, for when she did begin it trembled.
“I can’t thank you, Miss Syl,—it’s no use to try; but the strange part is how you understand it all, when you’ve no mother yourself.”
“Ah, but you see I have papa and auntie, and I just know.”
That day, after Syl and Aunt Rachel had lunched together, Syl said, in a coaxing little way she had,—
“Aunt Rachel, we never want to see the other half of that cold chicken again, do we?”
“Why, Syl—we”—
“Why, auntie, no—we never want to-morrow’s lunch furnished coldly forth by this sad relic. And there’s a tumbler of jelly we don’t want, either—and those rolls, and,—let me see, can sick people eat cake?”
“Why, Syl Graham, what are you talking about! Who’s sick?”