The Childrens Pilgrimage | Page 4

and true, then I'll die easy and comforted. Yes, I'll die easy, even though Lovedy ain't with me, even though I'll never lay my eyes on my Lovedy again."
"Who's Lovedy?" asked Cecile.
"Aye, child, we're coming to Lovedy, 'tis about Lovedy you've got to promise. Lovedy, she's my daughter, Cecile; she ain't no step-child, but my own, my werry own, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh."
"I never knew as you had a daughter of yer werry own," said Cecile.
"But I had, Cecile. I had as true a child to me as you were to yer father. My own, my own, my darling! Oh, my bonnie one, 'tis bitter, bitter to die with her far, far away! Not for four years now have I seen my girl. Oh, if I could see her face once again!"
Here the poor woman, who was opening up her life-story to the astonished and frightened child, lost her self-control, and sobbed hysterically. Cecile fetched water, and gave it to her, and in a few moments she became calm.
"There now, my dear, sit down and listen. I'll soon be getting weak, and I must tell everything tonight. Years ago, Cecile, afore ever I met yer father, I was married. My husband was a sailor, and he died at sea. But we had one child, one beautiful, bonnie English girl; nothing foreign about her, bless her! She was big and tall, and fair as a lily, and her hair, it was that golden that when the sun shone on it it almost dazzled you. I never seed such hair as my Lovedy's, never, never; it all fell in curls long below her waist. I was that proud of it I spent hours dressing it and washing it, and keeping it like any lady's. Then her eyes, they were just two bits of the blue sky in her head, and her little teeth were like white pearls, and her lips were always smiling. She had an old-world English name taken from my mother, but surely it fitted her, for to look at her was to love her.
"Well, my dear, my girl and me, we lived together till she was near fifteen, and never a cloud between us. We were very poor; we lived by my machining and what Lovedy could do to help me. There was never a cloud between us, until one day I met yer father. I don't say as yer father loved me much, for his heart was in the grave with your mother, but he wanted someone to care for you two, and he thought me a tidy, notable body, and so he asked me to marry him and he seemed well off, and I thought it 'ud be a good thing for Lovedy. Besides, I had a real fancy for him; so I promised. I never even guessed as my girl 'ud mind, and I went home to our one shabby little room, quite light-hearted like, to tell her. But oh, Cecile, I little knew my Lovedy! Though I had reared her I did not know her nature. My news seemed to change her all over.
"From being so sweet and gentle, she seemed to have the very devil woke up in her. First soft, and trembling and crying, she went down on her knees and begged me to give yer father up; but I liked him, and I felt angered with her for taking on what I called foolish, and I wouldn't yield; and I told her she was real silly, and I was ashamed of her. They were the bitterest words I ever flung at her, and they seemed to freeze up her whole heart. She got up off her knees and walked away with her pretty head in the air, and wouldn't speak to me for the evening; and the next day she come to me quick and haughty like, and said that if I gave her a stepfather she would not live with me; she would go to her Aunt Fanny, and her Aunt Fanny would take her to Paris, and there she would see life. Fanny was my youngest sister, and she was married to a traveler for one of the big shops, and often went about with her husband and had a gay time. She had no children of her own, and I knew she envied me my Lovedy beyond words.
"I was so hurt with Lovedy for saying she would leave me for her Aunt Fanny, that I said, bitter and sharp, she might do as she liked, and that I did not care.
"Then she turned very red and went away and sat down and wrote a letter, and I knew she had made up her mind to leave me. Still I wasn't really frightened. I said to