“I did not want the cherries in the least,” she began, putting her hand within Alick’s arm, and speaking in her usual don’t-careish tone; “I did not want the cherries, but I wanted to get away from mamma—she does so worry me, that I say things to her I feel sorry for afterwards. What a pity it is we cannot choose our own mothers, or that we are not allowed to exchange them after we come to years of discretion! Only to think, that out of three sisters my mamma should be my mamma. Even Mrs. Black, or your own mother, I think I could have got on with; but, as papa wisely observes, these things are arranged for us.”
“But don’t you love your mother, Bessie?” asked the boy, with a vague sense on him that the girl’s talk was wicked.
“Don’t I what?” she demanded.
“Don’t you love your mother?” he repeated, with the feeling growing stronger upon him, that his view of the matter was correct, and Bessie’s wrong; “of course, I know you disagree with her, and quarrel, and contradict her, but still, for all that, don’t you love her in the bottom of your heart?”
“Shall I tell you a secret?” she inquired, as they turned the end of the house—the garden end.
“If you will be so kind,” Alick replied, thinking at the same time how exceedingly beautiful Bessie looked in the moonlight. Perhaps she guessed at his thought, for she sighed, wishing that some person whom she liked much better than Alick Dudley were standing beside her at the moment, and then she forgot what she had been going to say, and went a long mental journey, while the youth waited patiently for her to speak.
“Will you be so kind?” he asked at last.
“So kind as what?” she repeated. “Oh! to tell you a secret. From the bottom of my heart, Alick, I never loved but one woman on earth, and that woman is your brother’s wife. If I had a mother like her now, or a sister, or anything—” she went on, hurriedly, only to stop short and leave her sentence unfinished.
“Heather would be a mother to you,” said the lad, softly.
“No, she wouldn’t,” was the reply; “she couldn’t, and it is not fit she should. There is nobody like Heather could be mother, or sister, or friend, or anything to me now. Heather does not like me, I know she does not, and I cannot blame her for it, for I am cross and hateful.”