This hot afternoon, gazing down upon Pansy's pathetic fragility, she thought what sorrows had been hers in the twenty years of her short life. The future looked sadder than usual, and her customary good cheer was temporarily absent; she felt a curious depression, or sense of coming trouble.
"You look so grave, Virgie darling!"
"Pansy, I'm a perfect pig. I believe I am suffering from that horrible feeling we used to call 'after-the-party' feeling."
"I don't wonder," replied Pansy sagely. "It must be pretty rotten to come back from all that fun and luxury and money to start being maid of all work again. Oh, Virgie, what are we to do?"
"Do? Why, get on, of course—do our work and enjoy it!" cried Virginia, springing up and going to the window. "Oh, Pansy, the delphiniums! How this hot weather has brought them out! There was not one in bloom when I left."
"I thought you'd be pleased with that!" cried the child in eager delight. "And look at the roses too, Virgie—the Hiawatha that you thought was dead!"
"Darling Hiawatha! He came from home," whispered Virginia. She knelt by the window, her elbows on the sill and her curved chin resting on her hands, while her Greuze eyes rested on the row of little garden plots, on the farther row that abutted upon them, and on the backs of the houses beyond those. She was young, it was summer-time, and yet, and yet——
"Well," said Pansy, "did Gerald send me his love or anything?"
Virginia started. Gerald at the moment filled her thoughts. She had missed him when he went away—went away without a word! She had not expected to miss him so much. Yet, with the lack of perception of her youth, she failed to connect her present formless dejection with the thought of his departure.
Pulling herself together with a determined effort, she turned from the window, explained to Pansy the fact that Gerald had been obliged to rush off to Liverpool for his father, and thus had naturally not had time for any special message or present. "But I have got something for you, sweetums," she murmured caressingly. "You wait until the outside porter condescends to deliver my boxes! You only wait!"