And here Jack lived content and happy till his mother died. With her death a great light had gone from his dwelling, for the mother and son were tenderly attached; but whatever Jack suffered, he suffered alone, in the privacy of his own room, or out in the dark streets, which he often traversed at night after his work was done. There was seldom a trace of sadness in his genial, good-natured face when he went back to Annie, who, since her accident and his mother’s death, had at times been given to fits of weeping and depression.
“I want somethin’, and I don’t know,” was what she had said at first when questioned as to the cause of her grief.
Gradually the want had resolved itself into an intense longing for “sister Georgie,” whom the child regarded as little less than an angel, almost worshipping the beautiful picture which she sometimes had brought to her bed, where she could see it and talk to it when Jack was away and Luna busy in the kitchen.
With all the eagerness of a child, she had waited for Georgie’s coming; and when Jack’s telegram from Iona had told her there must necessarily be a delay, she cried herself into a headache, and finally went to sleep with her white cheek pressed against the portrait of Georgie, who was not worthy of this child’s pure love, and whose heart was as cold and hard as the block of porcelain which shadowed forth her marvellous beauty.
It was a very sad heart which Jack Heyford carried up the stairs to his home on that day of his return, for he knew how bitter was the disappointment in store for the expectant little one, who had been dressed and waiting so long, and whose blue eyes shone like stars when the familiar step was heard upon the stairs. One look of welcome they gave to Jack, and then darted past him out into the passage,—out into vacancy; Georgie was not there.
“Oh, Jack,” and the eyes were like Georgie Burton’s, when looking afar off. “Where is sister? Didn’t she come with you?”
Jack told her where Georgie was as gently as possible, and without a word or tone which sounded like blame, and Annie listened to him; and when he said, “she bade me tell you not to cry, but be a good girl, and she will soon come to you,” the pretty lip quivered in a grieved kind of way, and the breath came in quick gasps as the child tried to do her sister’s bidding.
“Is it naughty to cry? then I won’t. I will try and be a good girl, but oh, I am sorrier than Georgie can guess,” Annie said at last, and Jack felt something rising to his lips like a curse upon the heartless woman this little child loved so much.
He gave her the chocolates, and the doll, and the puzzle, and the book, and sighed to see how quietly she put them away without so much as tasting her favorite candies. And then he told her about the terrible accident, and of Edna, who, he said was so young, and pretty, and who was suffering such terrible sorrow. Annie was interested, and the tears she had repressed to please Georgie, flowed in torrents now, as she said:
“I am so sorry for the lady, and I want to see her so much, and I mean to pray for her that Heaven will make it better for her sometime;” and that night, while Edna in her lonely bed at Mrs. Dana’s was weeping over her desolation and feeling so friendless and alone, a little crippled child lay on its back, and with hands clasped reverently, prayed for the poor lady whose husband was killed; prayed that “Heaven would bring it right some day, and make it better, and make her well, and make her happy, and make her another husband for Christ’s sake.” “I reckon that will do,” Annie whispered softly. “Mother said, ‘ask for Christ’s sake, and believe you’ll have it, and you will,’ but then”—and here a dark doubt of unbelief began to creep in—“if that is so, why didn’t sister come? I asked God to send her, and I believed He would just as hard, and He didn’t. Maybe it’s that lie I told the other day;” and again the waxen hands were folded, while the little trusting child asked, as she had done many times, to be forgiven for the falsehood told to Jack two weeks before.