“I have told you so much, Miss Hawley, because I know you must think strangely of my long absence, and then there is something about you which prompts me to wish for your good opinion. I might tell you much more of my life,—tell you of an error committed in boyhood, as it were, and in manhood bitterly regretted,—not the deed itself, but the concealment of it, but the subject would not interest you.”
Mildred could not help fancying that the subject would interest her, but she did not say so, and as Mr. Howell just then observed that Edith had fallen asleep in her arms, he ceased speaking and hastened to relieve her. The movement awakened Edith, who insisted upon sleeping with Minnie, as she called her.
“Yes, let her stay with me,” said Mildred; “she is such an affectionate little thing that she seems almost as near to me as a sister.”
“You are enough alike to be sisters. Did you know that?” Mr. Howell asked, and Mildred blushed painfully as she met the admiring gaze fixed upon her so intently.
He was thinking what a beautiful picture they made,—the rose just bursting into perfect loveliness, and the bud so like the rose that they might both have come from the same parent stem.
“Yes, Edith has your eyes,” he continued, “your mouth and your expression, but otherwise she is like her English mother.”
He bent down to kiss the child, who had fallen asleep again, and had Mildred been a little younger he might perhaps have kissed her, too, for he was an enthusiastic admirer of girlish beauty, but as it was, he merely bade her good-night and left the room.
The next morning Mildred was roused by a pair of the softest, fattest, chubbiest hands patting her round cheeks, and opening her eyes, she saw Edith sitting up in bed, her auburn curls falling from beneath her cap and herself playful as a kitten. Oh, how near and dear she seemed to Mildred, who hugged her to her bosom, calling her “little sister,” and wishing in her heart that somewhere in the world she had a sister as gentle, and pretty, and sweet, as Edith Howell.
That afternoon, as Mildred sat reading in her room, she saw a carriage drive up to the door, and heard Edith’s voice in the hall, saying to her father:
“Yes, Minnie must go,—Minnie must go.”