She hardly saw the children again that day. Susan, who seemed to be in an unusually gracious mood, took them out herself in the afternoon, and was very kind. But they were so little used to talk to her, for she had never tried to gain their confidence, that it did not occur to either Gladys or Roger to chatter about what nevertheless their little heads and hearts were full of. They had also, I think, a vague childish notion of loyalty to their old friend in not mentioning the subject, even though she had not told them not to do so. So they trotted along demurely, pleased at having their best things on, and proud of the honour of a walk with Miss Susan, even while not a little afraid of doing anything to displease her.
"They are good little things after all," thought Susan, when she had brought them home without any misfortune of any kind having marred the harmony of the afternoon. And the colour rushed into Gladys's face when Miss Susan sent them up to the nursery with the promise of strawberry jam for tea, as they had been very good.
"I don't mind so much about the strawberry jam," Gladys confided to Roger, "though it is very nice. But I do like when any one says we've been very good, don't you?"
"Yes," said Roger; adding, however, with his usual honesty: "I like bofe, being praised and jam, you know, Gladdie."
"'Cos," Gladys continued, "if we are good, you see, Roger, and I really think we must be so if she says so, it will be very nice for Papa, won't it? It matters more now, you see, what we are, 'cos of going to him. When people have people of their own they should be gooder even than when they haven't any one that cares much."
"Should they?" said Roger, a little bewildered. "But Mrs. Lacy cares," he added. Roger was great at second thoughts.
"Ye—s," said Gladys, "she cares, but not dreadfully much. She's getting old, you know. And sometimes—don't say so to anybody, Roger—sometimes I think p'raps she'll soon have to be going to heaven. I think she thinks so. That's another reason, you see," reverting to the central idea round which her busy brain had done nothing but revolve all day, "why it's such a good thing Papa's sent for us now."
"I don't like about people going to heaven," said Roger, with a little shiver. "Why can't God let them stay here, or go over the sea to where it's so pretty. I don't want ever to go to heaven."
"Oh, Roger!" said Gladys, shocked. "Papa wouldn't like you to say that."