"What's wrong, Florence?" said Sybil's father, as the door closed after the children.
"It is about Lucy," said auntie; "she is much worse; very ill indeed. She has caught cold somehow, and Frank seems almost to have lost hope already."
Two or three tears rolled down auntie's face as she spoke. For a minute or two Sybil's father said nothing.
"How about telling the children?" he asked at last.
"That's just it," replied auntie. "Frank leaves it to me to tell them or not, as I think best. He would not let Cecil or Louise write, as he thought if it had to be told I had better do so as gently as I could, by word of mouth. But they must be told—they are such quick children, I believe Floss suspects it already. And if—and if the next news should be worse," continued auntie with a little sob, "I would never forgive myself for not having prepared them, and they would be full of self-reproach for having been happy and merry as usual. Floss would say she should have known it by instinct."
"Would they feel it so much?—could they realise it? They are so young," said Sybil's father.
Auntie shook her head. "Not too young to feel it terribly," she said. "It is much better to tell them. I could not hide the sorrow in my face from those two honest pairs of eyes, for one thing."
"Well, you know best," said her husband.
A sad telling it was, and the way in which the children took it touched auntie's loving heart to the quick. They were so quiet and "pitiful," as little Sybil said. Floss's face grew white, for, with a child's hasty rush at conclusions, she fancied at first that auntie was paving the way for the worst news of all.
"Is mamma dead?" she whispered, and auntie's "Oh no, no, darling. Not so bad as that," seemed to give her a sort of crumb of hope, even before she had heard all.