Mrs. Paget was a light, active little body, and she did not seem to find the steep path up the side of the ledge at all fatiguing. She had another object in the climb besides the view. She had seen the flutter of a little black dress, and she was quite sure she had heard a suppressed sob; and the idea crossed her mind that Amity might have overheard the talk below, and been hurt by it.
She was quite right. Amity had overheard her aunt's remarks, and been cruelly hurt by them. To be sure she had said the same thing to herself a hundred times, but nobody had ever spoken it out in plain English before. It seemed somehow to make matters a great deal worse.
"'A dowdy Dutch doll!'"
Yes, that was all she was, or ever would be, and there was no use in trying. She wished she were a Roman Catholic, so that she might go into the great convent down by the river, and hide herself from the relations that were ashamed of her. Or else she wished she could die; then they would have the money and the fine place, and she would be with her mother, who loved her dearly, and had never been mortified because her little girl was not a beauty nor a genius. These were foolish thoughts, and rather naughty besides, but Amity was a poor, lonely, unhappy little girl, with nobody to whom she could tell her troubles; so it is no great wonder that she gave way to impatience.
"Poor little thing! I imagined as much," thought Mrs. Paget; but she did not say a word.
She was one to whom God had given a great many talents, and among them was that of sympathy. She knew how to comfort others with the comfort wherewith she herself was comforted of God, as the apostle indicates (2 Cor. 1:4). She saw that Amity was greatly hurt and excited, and not in any state to hear reason; so she just sat down, and lifting the little girl's head from the hard bench laid it in her lap, on her cool, soft cambric handkerchief, and stroked the hair as gently as if it had been the most beautiful wavy auburn hair in the world—stroked it as no one had ever done since the child's mother died.
Somehow her very touch calmed and comforted Amity. Presently she raised her tear-stained face.
"I am afraid it was very naughty to listen," said she, in a quivering voice; "I didn't mean to, but I was caught here, and did not know what to do at first."
"I understand," said Mrs. Paget; "I don't think you were at all to blame, so don't fret about it, my dear. Was that what you were crying about?"
"Yes, ma'am."