Syl grew sober.
“I’m thinking about poor Mary Gordon’s mother, auntie. She’s sick, and dying by inches; and Mary has to leave her all alone; and I’ve told her she shall stay at home to-morrow and make my ruffles, and we’ll pay her just the same as if she came here. And don’t you see that we must give her her dinner to take home, since she can’t come here after it?”
Aunt Rachel never said a word, but she got up and kissed Syl on each cheek. Then she brought a basket, and into it went the cold chicken and a cold tongue and jelly and buttered rolls and fruit, till even Syl was satisfied; and she took the heavy basket and danced away with it to the sewing-room, with a bright light in her dear brown eyes.
“I think you’d best go now,” she said. “I can’t get your mother, waiting there alone, out of my mind, and it’s spoiling my afternoon, don’t you see? And because you mustn’t come here to dine to-morrow, you must carry your dinner home with you; and Aunt Rachel put some fruit and some jelly in the basket that maybe your mother will like.”
That night, when Mr. Lucius Graham let himself into the hall with his latch-key, his daughter heard him and went to meet him, as usual. But she was very silent, and he missed his teasing, saucy, provoking Syl.
“Why, daughter, are you in a dream?” he asked once during dinner; but she only laughed and shook her head. She held her peace until she had him at her mercy, in the great easy-chair, and she was on the stool beside him, as her wont was. Then, suddenly, her question came.
“Papa, do you think a pomegranate silk without velvet would be very bad?”
He was inclined to tease her, and began with “Hideous!” but then he saw that her lips were fairly trembling, and her face full of eagerness, and forbore.
“How did you know you were to have the silk at all? But you know your power over me. Here is your needful;” and he put into her hands ten bright, new twenty-dollar bills.