'I was only ten, Rupert was twelve, and Sidney fourteen; such fine manly boys, Sid. especially, and so good to me. Mamma never got over their death; and then I lost her; it seems so lonely their leaving me behind. Sometimes I wonder for what purpose I am left, and if I have much to suffer before I am allowed to join them?' and Ethel's eyes grew fixed and dreamy, till Mildred's sympathetic voice roused her.
'I should think nothing can replace a brother. When I was young I used to wish I were one of a large family. I remember envying a girl who told me she had seven sisters.'
Ethel looked up with a melancholy smile.
'I wonder what it would be like to have a sister? I mean if Ella had lived—she would be sixteen now. I used to have all sorts of strange fancies about her when I was a child. Mamma once read me Longfellow's poem of Resignation, and it made a great impression on me. You remember the words, Miss Lambert?' and Ethel repeated in her fresh sweet voice—
'"Not as a child shall we again behold her,
For when with raptures wild,
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child.
"But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace,
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face."
That image of progressive beatitude and expanding youth seized strongly upon my childish imagination.' Mildred's smile was a sufficient answer, and Ethel went on in the same dreamy tone, 'After a time the little dead face became less distinct, and in its place I became conscious of a strange feeling, of a new sort of sister-love. I thought of Ella growing up in heaven, not learning the painful lessons I was so wearily learning here, but schooled by angels in the nobler mysteries of love; and so strong was this belief, that when I was naughty or had given way to temper, I would cry myself to sleep, thinking that Ella would be disappointed in me, and often I did not dare look up at the stars for fear her eyes should be sorrowfully looking down on me. You will think me a fanciful visionary, Miss Lambert, but this childish thought has been my safeguard in many an hour of temptation.'
'I would all our fancies were as pure. You need not fear that I should laugh at you as visionary, my dear Miss Trelawny; after all you may have laid your grasp on a great truth—there can be nothing undeveloped and imperfect in heaven, and infancy is necessarily imperfect.'
'I never sympathised with the crude fancies of the old masters,' returned Miss Trelawny; 'the winged heads of their bodiless cherubs are as unsatisfactory and impalpable as Homer's flitting shades and shivering ghosts; but your last speech has chilled me somehow.'
Mildred looked up in surprise; but Ethel's smile reassured her.