“What can it be? or am I growing fanciful in my old age?” thought Miss Fortescue.
The evening passed quietly. The sisters answered intelligently to a few questions from their mother about the little “sermon for children” they had heard, and Jasper added a word or two. It was evident that all three had listened with attention, and this somewhat reassured their aunt.
“Good-night, my darlings,” she said, when she kissed them, as they were all going to bed, for on Sunday evenings Jasper too was allowed to sit up till eight o’clock. But—was it fancy?—did not Leila shrink away a little; was there not a slight catch, as of a very far-away sob, in Chrissie’s throat; and why did Jasper’s blue eyes, which always looked dark at night, strike her as sad and mournful?
“What can it be?” she repeated to herself.
Nor would she have felt reassured, but, on the contrary, still more perplexed, had she overheard the little boy’s whisper as the three made their way upstairs.
“You will to-morrow, won’t you, Chrissie?” and Chrissie’s impatient “Nonsense, Japs. You’re not to interfere—it’s no business of yours.”
The child went to sleep with a heavy heart.
“And I were so pleased at findin’ it,” he thought. “It would all have been kite happy, if only Chrissie would tell.”
For he, of course, had no idea that his very readiness to help in the matter had been accepted by the others in direct defiance of their father’s warning.
And though the next day and two or three days after were bright and sunny, and though Leila and Chrissie really seemed more anxious to please their mother and to keep to her rules, a sort of cloud hung over the house, though Aunt Margaret was the only one who said to herself, with increasing misgiving—“The children have something on their minds. What can it be?”