"But if it isn't a good thing for us?" said Tom, "and it can't be a good thing for us—I'm sure God would unsettle it then."
I could not see it like that either.
"I shouldn't like to say it that way," I replied. "Don't you see that would be like saying papa would do something that wasn't good for us, and I shouldn't like to say that of papa—not even to God."
Tom lay down on the pillow again and gave a great sigh.
"I don't know what to do then," he said. "I am sure God would find out some way of making it right, and it's vrezy cross of you not to let me ask Him, Audrey. I don't believe you care a bit about them going away, and I know it has begun to break my heart already. When you told me first it began to thump so dreadfully fast, and then it gave a crack. I'm sure I felt it crack," and Tom began to cry.
It was dreadful to hear him talk like that. He didn't often cry. He wasn't a boy that cried for knocks and bumps at all, but just now he was rather weak with having been ill, and what he said about his heart quite frightened me. I don't know what I should have done, but just then Pierson opened the door of her room and began scolding us for talking so early in the morning. We were so afraid of her finding out that we were both in one bed, that we lay quite, quite still. Tom proposed to me in a whisper that we should begin to snore a little, but I whispered back that it would be no use as she had heard us talking just a minute before. And after grumbling a little more, Pierson shut the door and retired into her own room. Then Tom put his arms round me again and kissed me—his cross humours never lasted long; not like Racey's, who, though he was generally very good, once he did begin, went on and on and on till one didn't know what to do with him.
"I'm very sorry for calling you cross, Audrey," he said. "Perhaps we'd better wait and ask mother about it," and then we both kissed each other again, and somehow, though we were so very wide awake, all in a moment we went to sleep again and slept a good long while. For Pierson told us afterwards that what Tom had heard striking was only four o'clock after all.
When we woke again it was real morning—quite bright and sunny. And mother was standing beside the bedside, and little Racey beside her, looking very smooth and shiny with his clean pinafore and clean face and freshly brushed hair. Till I looked close at mother's face I could have fancied that all the strange news I had heard the night before had been a dream—it did not seem the least possible that it could be true. But alas! her face told that it was. Her eyes looked as if she had not been asleep, and though she was smiling it was a sort of sad smiling that made me feel as if I couldn't help crying.
"Children," she said, "didn't you promise me not to get into each other's beds?"
We both felt rather ashamed.