“After that everything was changed. It seemed like coming out of the mist to the top of the hill. Do you mind at home how even I could get a glimpse of the sea and the far-away mountains, on a fair summer morning? Nothing was so bad after that, and nothing will ever be so bad any more. I don’t think if even the old times were to come back I should ever be such a vexation to you again, Effie.”
“Would you like to go home with me, Christie?” said Effie. Christie looked up eagerly.
“Yes; for some things very much, if you thought best. I am to go in the summer, at any rate. Would you like me to go now, Effie?”
“It is not what I would like that we must think about. If I had had my way, you would never have left home. Not that I am sorry for it now, far from it; and though I would like to take you with me—indeed, I came with no other thought—yet, as there is as good a reason for your staying as there ever was for your coming, and far better, now that you are contented, dear, I am not sure that I should be doing right to take you away before summer. They would miss you here, Christie.”
“Yes,” said Christie, with a sigh, “I dare say they would. But I must go home when summer comes, Effie. Why, it is more than a year and a half since I have seen any of them but Annie and you.”
“Yes,” said Effie, thoughtfully. She was saying to herself that for many reasons it was better for Christie to stay where she was, for a time at least. She had kept the sunny side of their home life in Christie’s view since she had been there. But it had another side. She saw very plainly that Christie was more comfortably situated in many ways than she could possibly be at home, to say nothing of the loss of the help she could give them, and the increase of expense which another would make in their straitened household.
Yet there was something in Christie’s voice that made her heart ache at the sad necessity.
“I don’t believe it will grieve you more to stay than it will grieve me to go home without you,” she said, at last. “I have been trying to persuade myself ever since I came here that I had better take you home with me. But I am afraid I ought to deny myself the happiness.”
It was not easy to say this, as was plain enough from the tears that fell on Christie’s head as it sank down on her sister’s breast. Christie had rarely seen Effie cry. Even at the sad time of their father’s death, Effie’s tears had fallen silently and unseen, and she was strangely affected by the sight of them now.
“Effie,” she said, eagerly, “I am quite content to stay. And I must tell you now—though I didna mean to do so at first, for fear something might happen to hinder it—Mrs Seaton said one day, if Claude still grew better, she might perhaps send him with me for a change of air, and then I should be at home and still have my wages to help. Wouldna that be nice? And I think it is worth a great deal that Mrs Seaton should think of trusting him with me so far-away. But he is better, and I have learned what to do for him; and he is such a little child we need make no difference for him at home. Would you like it, Effie?”