'Mamma is ever so much younger than I,' she said to herself when she found herself alone for the night. 'She is as charming and sweet as she can be. But I can foresee some things pretty clearly. It is a good thing I am of a different character. What would happen if we were all as impulsive and'—'childish' was the word in her thoughts, but again she felt a little startled at the length to which her criticism of her mother was going, and pulled herself up—'as impulsive as Francie, and as mamma must be by nature?'
And she fell asleep in the midst of a not unpleasing picture of herself as the wise, considerate prop of the whole family, looked up to by her parents, leant upon by Lady Myrtle, a Lady Bountiful to all within her reach, a——But here I think her imaginings probably faded into the phantasmagoria of dreams.
Mrs Mildmay had bidden her elder girl a fond good-night; then she hastened along the passage for a moment's peep into Frances's little room.
'The child will be asleep, I daresay,' she thought to herself. 'It is almost selfish of me to risk waking her. But I will be very careful, and I really cannot resist the delight of seeing them in bed, of knowing they are under the same roof again at last.'
And she stole in. It was a moonlight night. Francie had been in bed some little time, but she was not asleep. She was lying with her eyes wide open gazing out through the unshaded window, which was within her view, at the tree tops, illumined by the silvery radiance, and swaying gently in the soft night breeze; her shaggy hair making a background on the pillow for her sweet, childish face. And at the faint sound her mother made on entering she started up.
'Mamma, mamma!' she cried, as Mrs Mildmay knelt down and threw her arms round the little figure. 'My own little mamma, my own, my own! to think it is you, to think I really and truly have you. Oh, can I ever be so happy again! Oh, mamma darling, I don't know how to thank God enough; that was what I was thinking about when you came in. No, no, you didn't wake me. I haven't been asleep.'
'My darling, my own little girl!' whispered Mrs Mildmay.
'Mamma dear,' Frances went on, after a moment's beautiful silence. 'I feel already that I can tell you everything. Now there's one thing; it's come into my mind again since I've been in bed; I'm afraid I forgot about it in the first rush of happiness, you know, but now I've remembered. Mamma, don't you think when we're awfully happy we should try to do something for other people—that God means us to? Well, it's about the Harpers. Oh, mamma, I'm afraid they are having such very bad troubles just now.'
Mrs Mildmay started a little.
'You don't mean, dear—you haven't heard anything quite lately, about the father, Captain Harper, have you?'