'Mamma,' I said, 'we have made the hut so nice and tidy for to-morrow—Sunday, you know. You and papa will come and have tea there, won't you? It will be the first time this year' (and 'the last perhaps' seemed whispered into my mind, though I did not utter the words), for the spring-coming had been uncertain and we had all had colds.
Mamma looked at papa.
'Yes,' he said; 'certainly we will. And the little ones too, Ida?'
'Of course,' I said, and then I went off to talk about cakes—and muffins if possible, to please Dods—to Hoskins, the result of the interview proving very satisfactory.
When I came back to the drawing-room the little ones were there—Denzil, solemn as usual; Esmé hopping and skipping about and chattering thirteen to the dozen, as usual, too! She is three or four years older now, and beginning to 'sober down,' as they say, so I hope if she ever reads this, which certainly will not be for three or four or more years from now, she will have gone on sobering down, enough to understand what a 'flibbertigibbet' (that is a word of Hoskins's which I think very expressive) she was, and not to be hurt at my description of her. For I do love her dearly, and I always have loved her dearly, and I should be sorry for her ever to lose her good spirits, though it is already a comfort that she sometimes sits still now, and listens to what is said to her.
All the same, that part of our lives which I am writing this story about, would have been much duller and harder but for our butterfly's funny, merry ways.
This afternoon she was especially laughing and mischievous, and it made me feel a little cross. I was tired, I daresay, with all the work we had been doing, and the sadness that had come upon us so suddenly, and I did want to be quiet and talk sensibly. It was a little papa's fault too, I must say. He is sometimes rather like a boy still, though he has four big children. He hates being unhappy! I don't think he would mind my saying so of him, and he got mischievous and teased Esmé, to make her say funny things, as she often does.
And I suppose I looked rather too grave, for, after a little, mamma whispered to me—
'Ida, dear, don't look so dreadfully unhappy; you almost make me wish we had not told you anything till we were obliged to do so.'
'I don't look worse than Geordie,' I replied, in a whisper too, 'or—or,' as I happened just then to catch sight of my younger brother's face, 'than Denzil.'