“It will be easier for you now that the harvest is over. Annie and Sarah will be in the house, and you will have less to do. And, besides, they will make it more cheerful.”
Christie made a movement of impatience.
“You are like Aunt Elsie. You think that I like to be idle and don’t wish to do my share. At any rate, the girls being in the house will make little difference to me. I shall have to be doing something all the time—little things that don’t come to anything. Well, I suppose there is no help for it. It will be all the same in the end.”
Poor Christie! She had a feeling all the time that she was very cross and unreasonable, and she was as vexed as possible with herself for spoiling this last precious half-hour with Effie by her murmurs and complaints. She had not meant it. She was sorry they had waited by the brook. She knew it was for her sake that Effie had proposed to sit down in her favourite resting-place; but before she had well uttered the last words she was wishing with all her heart that they had hurried on.
Effie looked troubled. Christie felt rather than saw it; for her face was turned quite away, and she was gathering up and casting from her broken bits of branches and withered leaves, and watching them as they were borne away by the waters of the brook. Christie would have given much to know whether she was thinking of her foolish words, or of something else.
“I suppose she thinks it’s of no use to heed what I say. And now I have spoiled all the pleasure of thinking about to-day.”
Soon she asked, in a voice which had quite lost the tone of peevishness:
“When will you come home again, Effie?”
Effie turned towards her immediately.
“I don’t know. I’m not quite sure, yet. But, Christie, I canna bear to hear you speak in that way—as though you saw no good in anything. Did you ever think how much worse it might be with you and with us all?”