Rosalind did not make any reply. She called her little sister to her presently, but Amy declared that she was “reading a book,” which was, under Mrs. Lennox’s sway, a reason above all others for leaving the little student undisturbed. Mrs. Lennox had not been used to people who were given to books, and she admired the habit greatly. “Don’t call her if she is reading, Rosalind. I wonder how it is the rest of you don’t read. But Amy always has her book. Perhaps it is because of reading so much that she is so pale. Well, Uncle John is coming to-morrow, and he will want the children to take long walks, and I dare say all this little confusion will blow away. I wish John had come a little sooner; he might have tried the ‘cure’ as well as me, for I am sure he has rheumatism, if not gout. Gentlemen always have one or the other when they come to your uncle’s age, and it might have saved him an illness later,” said Aunt Sophy. She had to go away in her chair, in a few minutes, for her bath, and it was this that made her think what an excellent thing it would be for John.
When she had gone, Rosalind sat very silent with her two little sisters in the room. Sophy went on talking, while Rosalind mused and kept silent. She was so well accustomed to Sophy talking that she took little notice of it. When the little girl said anything of sufficient importance to penetrate the mist of self-abstraction in which her sister sat, Rosalind would answer her. But generally she took little notice. She woke up, however, in the midst of one of Sophy’s sentences which caught her ear, she could not tell why.
“Think it’s a real lady?” Sophy said. It was at the end of a long monologue, during which her somewhat sharp voice had run on monotonous without variety. “Think it’s a real lady? There could be no ghost here, or if there was, why should it go to Johnny, who don’t understand, who has no sense. I think it’s a real lady that comes in to look at the children. Perhaps she is fond of children; perhaps she’s not in her right mind,” said Sophy; “perhaps she has lost a little boy like Johnny; perhaps—” here she clapped her hands together, which startled Rosalind greatly, and made little Amy, looking up with big eyes from within the curtain, jump from her seat; “I know who it is—it is the lady that gave him the toy.”
“The toy—what toy?”
“Oh, you know very well, Rosalind. That is what it is—the lady that had lost a child like Johnny, that brought him that thing that you wind up, that runs, that nurse says must have cost a mint of money. She says mint of money, and why shouldn’t I? I shall watch to-night, and try if I can’t see her,” cried Sophy; “that is the lady! and Johnny is such a little silly he has never found it out. But it is a real lady, that I am quite certain, whatever the children say.”
“But Amy has never seen anything, Sophy, or heard anything,” Rosalind said.
“Oh, Rosalind, how soft you are! How could she help hearing about it, with Aunt Sophy and you rampaging in the room every night! You don’t know how deep she is; she would just go on and go on, and never tell.”
“Amy, come here,” said Rosalind.
“Oh, please, Rosy! I am in such an interesting part.”
“Amy, come here—you can go back to your book after. Sophy says you have heard about the lady Johnny thinks he sees.”