“I shall always love that girl,” said Mrs Waldron enthusiastically. “It is her doing about Jerry. Oh, Charlotte, darling! to think that all our poor little plans for sending him abroad are to be so delightfully replaced.”
“May I tell him, mamma?” said Charlotte eagerly; “to-morrow, not to-night, of course! I will take care not to startle him. But it would be so nice. And I will tell him how kind she has been—he is very fond of her,” she added with a slightly reluctant honesty.
“You must be fond of her too, my dear child,” said her father.
“I would like to be, at least I think so,” said Charlotte, and a vision rose before her of Claudia’s sweet, appealing face. “I have been horrid to her, I know,” she added to herself, “but she was rather queer at school.”
Chapter Sixteen.
Claudia’s Victory.
It seemed more like a dream than ever the next day.
“I can’t understand how I took it so quietly,” Charlotte thought to herself as she was dressing. “I suppose I was half stunned. I feel this morning as if I could just scream with delight. To think of Silverthorns coming to be our home—our own beautiful home. And how I have grumbled, and how jealous I have been of her. I don’t suppose she could ever quite understand—nobody who has never been poor themselves can. But, oh, I shall try to be kind and sympathising to others. It makes me feel as I used to when I was little, sometimes, when mamma saw I was cross and discontented, and instead of speaking sharply she would do some kind thing to make me feel happy. I wonder if God sometimes makes people good that way? For I know I haven’t deserved it, though dear papa, and mamma, and Arthur, and Jerry have. Oh, to think I may tell Jerry!”