“I cannot stay to-night, mamma, because they expect me back,” said Violet. “But I shall come home to-morrow. They don’t need me half as much as you do, and I must come. You are sick yourself, mamma.”
“No, I am tired, that is all; and the weather is so warm. Don’t come till the children are well. It is your proper place there, and even you cannot help us here while the weather is so warm.”
It was very hot and close, and Violet fancied that from the low fields beyond, where there was water still standing, a sickly odour came.
“No wonder they don’t get strong,” said she.
Mr Oswald had spoken in the morning about sending his little girls to the country, or to the seaside. The doctor had suggested this as the best thing that could be done for them. Violet thought of their large house, with its many rooms, and of the garden in which it stood, and looked at her little sisters and brothers growing so pale and languid in the close air, which there was no hope of changing, with a feeling very like envy or discontent rising in her heart.
“Mamma,” said she, “it is a dreadful thing to be poor;” and then she told of the plan for sending the Oswalds away for change of air, and how they were already well and strong in comparison to their own poor darlings, and then she said, again, “It is a dreadful thing to be so poor.”
“We are not so poor as we might be?” said her mother, gravely. “Think how it would have been if we had lost one of them, dear. God has been very good to us, and we must not be so ungrateful as to murmur because we have not all that others have, or all that we might wish for.”
“I know it, mamma. But look at these pale cheeks. Poor wee Polly! she is only a shadow of our baby. If we could only send her to Gourlay for a little while.”
“Do you think her looking so poorly? I think it is the heat that is keeping them all so languid. Don’t look so miserable. If it is necessary for them to go to the country, we shall manage to send them in some way. But we are quite in the country here, and when we have had rain the air will be changed, and the heat may be less, and then they will all be better.”
“Have you made any plan about going to the country?” asked Violet, eagerly.