“Oh, every night!”
“Amy, and you never said it was mamma!”
They trembled both as if a blast of wind had passed over them, and clasped each other closer. Was it Rosalind that had become a child again and Amy that was the woman? She whispered, with her lips on her sister’s cheek,
“How was I to tell? She came to me—to me and Johnny. We belong to her, Rosalind.”
“And not I!” the girl exclaimed, with a great cry. Then she recovered herself, that thought being too keen to pass without effect.
“Amy! you are hers without her choice, but she took me of her own will to be her child; I belong to her almost more than you. Oh, not more, not more, Amy! but you were so little you did not know her like me.”
Little Amy recognized at last that in force of feeling she was not her sister’s equal, and for a time they were both silent. Then the child asked, looking round her with a wild and frightened glance, “Rosalind, must mamma be dead?”
This question roused them both to a terror and panic such as in the first emotion and wonder they had not been conscious of. Instead of love came fear; they had been raised above that tremor of the flesh, but now it came upon them in a horror not to be put aside. Even Rosalind, who was old enough to take herself to task, felt with a painful thrill that she had stood by something that was not flesh and blood, and in the intensity of the shuddering terror forgot her nobler yearning sympathy and love. They crept together to the night-lamp and lit the candles from it, and closed all the doors, shrinking from the dark curtains and shadows in the corners as if spectres might be lurking there. They had lit up the room thus when nurse returned from her evening’s relaxation down-stairs, cheerful but tired, and ready to go to bed. She stood holding up her head and gazing at them with eyes of amazement. “Lord, Miss Rosalind, what’s the matter? You’ll wake the children up,” she cried.
“Oh, it is nothing, nurse. Amy was awake,” said Rosalind, trembling. “We thought the light would be more cheering.” Her voice shook so that she could with difficulty articulate the words.
“And did you think, Miss Rosalind, that the child could ever go to sleep with all that light; and telling her stories, and putting things in her head? I don’t hold with exciting them when it is their bedtime. It may not matter so much for a lady that comes in just now and then, but for the nurse as is always with them— And children are tiresome at the best of times. No one knows how tiresome they are but those that have to do for them day and night.”