Only now and again she lifted up her heart in prayer to the Good Shepherd, asking Him to make her aunt love her and help her.
CHAPTER XXII
THE LOST LAMB FOUND
The time that Rosalie waited in the arbour seemed very, very long to her. Every minute was like an hour, and at the least sound she started from her seat, and looked down the gravel path. But it was only a bird, or a falling leaf, or some other trifling sound, which Rosalie's anxious ears had exaggerated.
But at last, when the sound she had been listening for so long did really come, when footsteps were heard on the gravel path coming towards the arbour, Rosalie sat still, until they drew close, for in a moment all the fears she had had by the way returned upon her.
They were very quick and eager footsteps which Rosalie heard, and in another moment, almost before she knew that her Aunt Lucy had entered the arbour, she found herself locked in her arms.
'Oh, my little Rosalie,' said she, with a glad cry, 'have I found you at last?'
For Jessie had told Mrs. Leslie that it was Norah's child who was waiting to speak to her in the arbour.
Rosalie could not speak. For a long time after that she was too full of feeling for any words. And her Aunt Lucy could only say, over and over again, 'My little Rosalie, have I found you at last?' It seemed to Rosalie more like what the Good Shepherd said of His lost sheep than anything she had ever heard before.
'Have you been looking for me, dear Aunt Lucy?' she said at last.