'Yes, always—I have never missed once; it seems to rest me for the week. Just at first, perhaps, it made me sad, but now it is different.'
'How do you mean, my dear?'
'I don't know that I can put it exactly in words,' she returned, troubled by a want of definite expression. 'At first it used to make me cry, and wish I were dead, but now I never feel so like living as when I am here.'
'Try to make me understand. I don't think you will find me unsympathising,' in Mildred's tenderest tones.
'You are never that, Aunt Milly. I find myself telling you things already. Don't you see, I can come and pour out all my trouble to her, just as I used to? and sometimes I fancy she answers me, not in speaking, you know, but in the thoughts that come as I sit here.'
'That is a beautiful fancy, Olive.'
'Others might laugh at it—Cardie would, I know, but it is impossible to believe mamma can help loving us wherever she is; and she always liked us to come and tell her everything, when we were naughty, or if we had anything nice happening to us.'
'Yes, dear, I quite understand. But you were reading.'
'That was mamma's favourite book. I generally read a few pages before I go. One seems to understand it all so much better in this quiet place, with the sun shining, and all those graves round. One's little troubles seem so small and paltry by comparison.'
Mildred did not answer. She took the book out of Olive's hand—it was Thomas à Kempis—and a red pencil line had marked the following passage:—