‘Oh, Muriel, Muriel, so full of fancies!’
‘Ah! but there are some of them real—too real. Where is the old cradle that my little brother used to sleep in?’
‘I don’t know, darling. In the loft, perhaps.’
‘They should have burnt it. I peeped into the loft one day, and saw it in a corner—the old cradle. It set me thinking—such strange thoughts!’
She remained silent for a few minutes, still crouching at her grandmother’s knees, and with her hollow eyes fixed on the low fire.
‘Didn’t you hear a child cry?’ she asked, suddenly, looking up with a listening face first at the old woman, then at Maurice. ‘Didn’t you, granny?’
‘No, love. I heard nothing.’
‘Didn’t you, then?’ to Maurice.
‘No, indeed.’
‘Ah, you are all of you deaf. I hear that crying so often—a poor little feeble voice. It comes and goes like the wind in the long winter nights, but it sounds so distant. Why doesn’t it come nearer? Why doesn’t it come close to us, that we may take the child in and comfort it?’