“I like it,” said Leam.

“Nonsense! then you should not like it.  It is not natural for a girl of your age to like it.  Come with us,” cried Mrs. Corfield:  “why not?”

“I have something to do,” Leam answered solemnly.

“What can a chit of a thing like you have to do?  Come with us, I tell you.”  Mrs. Corfield said this heartily rather than roughly, though really she could not be bothered, as she said to herself, to stand there wasting her time in arguing with a girl like Leam.  It was too ridiculous.

Leam looked at her with mingled tragedy and contempt, and disdained to answer.

“What have you got to do?” again asked Mrs. Corfield.

“I shall not tell you,” answered Leam, holding her head very high.

How, indeed, should she tell this little sharp-faced woman that she was thinking how she could prevent madame from coming here as her home?  The saints had deserted her; she had prayed to them, threatened them, coaxed, entreated, but they had not heard her; and now she had nothing but herself, only her poor little frail hands and bewildered brain, to protect her mother’s memory from insult and revenge her wrongs.  The fever in her veins had given her mamma’s face sorrowful and weeping, meeting her wherever she turned—­mamma’s voice, faint as the softest summer breeze in the trees, whispering to her, “Little Leama, I am unhappy.  Sweet heart, do not let me be unhappy.”  For five days this fancy had haunted her, but it had not become distinct enough for guidance.  She was listening now, as she was listening always, for mamma to tell her what to do.  She was sure she would show her in time how to prevent that wicked woman from living here, bearing her name, taking her place:  mamma could trust her to take care of her, now that she could not take care of herself.  As she had said to papa, if all the world, the saints, and God himself deserted hers she, her child, would not.

She would not tell these thoughts, even to Alick.  They were a secret, sacred between her and mamma, and no one must share them.  If, then, she went with this bird-like, insistent woman, she would talk to her and not let her think:  she and Alick would stand between herself and mamma’s spirit, and then mamma would perhaps leave her again, and go back to heaven angry with her.  No, she would not go, and she lifted up her eyes to say so.

As she looked up Alick whispered softly, “Come.”

Feverish, excited, her brain clouded by her false fancies, Leam did not recognize his voice.  To her it was her mother sighing through the sunny stillness, bidding her go with them, perhaps to find some method of hinderance or revenge which she could not devise for herself.  They were clever and knew more than she did; perhaps her mother and the saints had sent them as her helpers.

It seemed almost an eternity during which these thoughts passed through her brain, while she stood looking at Mrs. Corfield so intently that the little woman was obliged to lower her eyes.  Not that Leam saw her.  She was thinking, listening, but not seeing, though her tragic eyes seemed searching Mrs. Corfield’s very soul.  Then, glancing upward to the sky, she said with an air of self-surrender, which Alick understood if his mother did not, “Yes, I will go with you:  mamma says I may.”