"I wish I could get you some flowers," she said eagerly, "some out of our garden. Oh, we had such lots there, such lovely ones, roses, and violets, jessamine and lilac, and may—oh, all sorts. I had a garden of my own, too. Oh, I'd love to take you to granny's, and let you see it all!"
Charlie was watching her and listening with intense interest. "How sorry you must be to leave it all!" he remarked sympathetically. "I'd love to lie in a garden with flowers, and the bees humming, and no noise of rattling carts and milk-cans. Oh, Jessie!" but to his dismay Jessie buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.
"I can't stay here," she cried, "I can't, I can't! I must go home. I shall die if I don't go home to granp," and she sobbed and sobbed until Charlie was quite frightened.
"Jessie, don't—don't—don't cry like that. I'll ask mother to let you go, if you want to so badly—but I wish you didn't," he sighed, his own lips quivering. "I wish you would stay here. I want you so much, I am so lonely and dull, and—and I hoped you were come to stay."
Jessie's own tears were checked more quickly by the sight of his than they would have been by any other means. She pulled herself together as well as she could. "No—o, don't ask mother," she said in a choked, thick voice, "it is no use, father would make me stay, and it would only make him angry if we asked him, and I—I want to help you, too," she added, quite truthfully. "I shan't mind so much by and by, p'raps. Don't cry, Charlie. Turn round and listen, and I'll tell you more stories. Then, after breakfast, I'll tidy your room."
The violence of Charlie's sobs had quite frightened away and stopped hers, and banished for a time her home-sickness. She put all her thoughts into her coaxing of Charlie, and after a time he raised his head and turned around and faced her, and while he lay back on his pillows, very weary after his excitement, Jessie, the more weary of the two, tried bravely to be cheerful, and to talk brightly, and so Mrs. Lang found them when, a little later, she brought up Charlie's breakfast on a tray.
Mrs. Lang even smiled when she saw the two together, evidently on such good terms, and the happy smile with which Charlie looked up at her delighted her sad heart. He was the apple of her eye, the great love of her life, the only thing in the world she cared for, and to see him happy, to see his dull, cheerless days brightened, gave her more pleasure than anything. She kissed her boy and looked quite kindly at Jessie.
"Your breakfast is ready in the oven," she said, "and I'm sure you must be famished. I am. I thought I should never get the men started off. Now, darling," to Charlie, "will you take your breakfast?" She put down the tray and raised him on his pillow a little. Jessie, accustomed now to invalids, beat up the pillow and placed it behind him.
"Is that right?" she asked.
"Oh yes, that's lovely," said Charlie, with a sigh of pleasure.