Molly's face was completely overcast; it was threatening and angry.
"Poor child!" said Edmund gently.
"I wonder," said Molly, "if anybody used to say 'poor child' when I was small. There must have been some one who pitied an orphan, even in the cheerful, open-air system of Aunt Anne's house, where no one ever thought of feelings, or fancies, or frights at night, or loneliness."
Edmund looked at her with a sympathy that tried to conceal his curiosity.
"Was it possible," he wondered, "that she really thought she was an orphan?"
"It's dreadful to think of a very lonely child," he said.
"But some people have to be lonely all their lives," said Molly.
Sir Edmund was touched. She had raised her head and looked at him with a pleading confidence. Then, with one swift movement, she was suddenly kneeling and tearing to pieces two or three primroses in succession.
"Some people have to say things that can never be really said, or else keep everything shut up."
"Don't you think they may make a mistake, and that the things can be said—" He hesitated; he did not want to press her unfairly into confidence; "to the right person?" he concluded rather lamely.