“So fade our hopes,” thought Frances, “many of them at least. But yet,” for in another moment the happy bird was back again within hearing, “perhaps it only seems so to us. There must always be real sources of joy and thankfulness, even if they are sometimes beyond our perception.”
Yet she did not deceive herself. This sensation of almost exhilarating resolve and self-sacrifice would not, she knew, be lasting. There were hard struggles before her still, for the mere habit of thought into which she had almost insensibly glided during the last few weeks as to her own life and future was not to be shaken off all at once.
“The best I can do,” she went on, “is to fill my mind, to the exclusion as far as possible of everything else, with Betty. Time enough, when I can feel at rest about her, for me to unlock it all again and decide to what extent I have been to blame.”
A few yards before their own gate she caught sight of her sisters coming to meet her, and, as she watched them approaching, the listlessness and languor of Betty’s movements struck her forcibly.
“How I wish I had gone with you, Francie,” said Eira. “Betty is so tiresome! She wouldn’t go for a walk, she wouldn’t even sit out in the garden comfortably, and I only stayed at home to keep her company, because she seemed dull!”
“Are you dull, dear?” said Frances, turning to Betty. Her tone was very kind, indeed tender, and Betty, glancing up at her, read a confirmation of this in her sister’s eyes.
Betty’s cheeks grew pink, though the colour left them again as quickly as it had come.
“Spring often makes people feel rather tired,” she said. “There is nothing the matter with me except that.”
“But you mustn’t be tired,” said Frances. “It is so lovely now, so very lovely. We must be all quite well—and happy, so as to enjoy it. We can stay out a little longer. Let us sit down, and I am rather tired myself.”
Betty’s face expressed some self-reproach. “Eira,” she said. “We should not have let her go alone to the village. She always does the disagreeable things.”