“You are the only one of all my little girls who ever hid anything from me. No, I am not angry with you, Katie, and I will kiss you as much as you like,” for Katie’s arms were round her neck in a moment; “but you have made mother cry, because you do not love her as she does you.”
“Mother shall never cry again on my account,” thought Katie; and, strange to say, the tendency to secretiveness in the child’s nature seemed cured from that day. Katie ever afterward confessed her misdemeanors and the accidents that happen to the best-regulated children with a frankness that bordered on bluntness.
“I have done it, mother,” she would say, “but somehow I don’t feel a bit sorry. I rather liked hurting Ella’s feelings; it seemed to serve her right.”
“Perhaps when we have talked about it a little you will feel sorry,” her mother would reply quietly; “but I have no time for talking just now.”
Mrs. Lambert was always very busy; on these occasions she never found time for a heated and angry discussion. When Katie’s hot cheeks had cooled a little, and her childish wrath had evaporated, she would quietly argue the point with her. It was an odd thing that Katie generally apologized of her own accord afterward—generally owned herself the offender.
“Somehow you make things look different, mother,” she would say, “I can’t think why they all seem topsy-turvy to me.”
“When you are older I will lend you my spectacles,” her mother returned, smiling. “Now run and kiss Ella, and pray don’t forget next time that she is two years older; it can’t possibly be a younger sister’s duty to contradict her on every occasion.”
It was in this way that Mrs. Lambert had influenced her children, and she had reaped a rich harvest for her painstaking, patient labors with them, in the freely bestowed love and confidence with which her grown-up daughters regarded her. Now, as she sat apart, the sound of their fresh young voices was the sweetest music to her; not for worlds would she have allowed her own inward sadness to damp their spirits, but more than once the pen rested in her hand, and her attention wandered.
Outside the wintry sun was streaming on the leafless trees and snowy lawns; some thrushes and sparrows were bathing in the pan of water that Katie had placed there that morning.
“Let us go for a long walk this afternoon,” Christine was saying, “through the Coombe Woods, and round by Summerford, and down by the quarry.”