"'And will dear daddy never come home again?' I sobbed. 'Ah, I have no one to love me now, but the dear good lady up at the Hall!'
"'Don't I love you, Philip?'
"'No,' I replied scornfully, 'you don't love me, and you never did.'
"'How do you know that?'
"'Because you never kiss me, and take me up in your lap, as Lady Moncton does, and look at me with kind eyes, and call me your dear boy. No, no, when I come for you to love me, you push me away, and cry angrily, 'Get away, you little pest! don't trouble me!' and grandmother is always cursing me, and wishing me dead. Do you call that love?'
"I never shall forget the ghastly smile that played about her beautiful stern mouth, as she said unconsciously, aloud to herself: 'It is not the child, but the voice of God that speaks through him. How can I expect him to love me?'
"How I wondered what she meant. For years that mysterious sentence haunted my dreams.
"I was soon called to endure a heavier grief. Lady Moncton's health daily declined. She grew worse—was no longer able to go out in the carriage, and the family physician went past our house many times during the day on his way to the Hall.
"Old Dinah and my mother were constantly absent attending upon the sick lady, and I was left in charge of a poor woman who came over to the cottage to clean the house, and take care of little Alice, while my mother was away.
"One day my mother came hastily in. She was flushed with walking fast, and seemed much agitated. She seized upon me, washed my face and hands, and began dressing me in my Sunday suit.