“You must think of mamma always, Meta. Think that she is looking down at you, on all you do, and try and please her. She was very good: and you must be good, making ready to go to her.”
A renewed burst of sobs came from the child. George waited, and then resumed.
“When I come back—if I live to come back; or when you come to me in India; at any rate when I see you again, Meta, you will probably be grown up; no longer a child, but a young lady. If I shall only find you like mamma was in all things, I shall be happy. Do you understand, darling?”
“Yes,” she sobbed.
“Good, and gentle, and kind, and lady-like,—and remembering always that there’s another world, and that mamma has gone on to it. I should like to have kept you with me, Meta, but it cannot be: I must go out alone. You will not quite forget me, will you?”
She put up her hand and her face to his, and moaned in her pain. George laid his aching brow on hers. He knew that it might be the last time they should meet on earth.
“I shall write to you by every mail, Meta, and you must write to me. You can put great capital letters together now, and that will do to begin with. And,” his voice faltered, “when you walk by mamma’s grave on Sundays—and see her name there—you will remember her—and me. You will think how we are separated: mamma in heaven; I, in a far-off land; you here: but you know the separation will not be for ever, and each week will bring us nearer to its close—its close in some way. If—if we never meet again on earth, Meta——”
“Oh don’t, papa! I want you to come back to me.”
He choked down his emotion. He took the little face in his hands and kissed it fervently: in that moment, in his wrung feelings, he almost wished he had no beloved child to abandon.
“You must be called by your own name now. I should wish it. Meta was all very well,” he continued, half to himself, “when she was here; that the names should not interfere with each other. Be a good child, my darling. Be very obedient to Aunt Cecil, as you used to be to mamma.”