‘Is papa ill?’ she asked abruptly.

Alie glanced at her, frowning slightly.  Her mother turned quickly.

‘What a strange question to ask, Bride,’ she said; ’it is just like you—­you cannot but know that papa is not at all strong.’

Biddy looked puzzled.  ‘Strong’ to her meant vaguely being able to lift heavy weights, or things of that kind.

‘I didn’t know he was ill,’ she replied.  ’I didn’t know big people were ill except for going to die, like our ’nother grandmamma.  Papa’s had the measles and chicken-pox when he was little, hasn’t he?  I thought it was only children that could be ill to get better like that.’

Mrs. Vane glanced at Rosalys in a sort of despair.  But before Alie could say anything to smooth matters, her mother called Bridget from her seat and made her stand before her.

‘Bridget,’ she said, ’I don’t know what to say to you.  Have you no heart or feeling at all?  How can you say such things.  I do not believe in your not understanding; you can understand when you choose, and you are nearly eight years old.  You must know how miserably anxious I have been and still am about your father; you must know it is for his health we have come to this strange, dreary place, away from every one we care for, and you can talk in that cold-hearted, cold-blooded way about dying and not getting better and—­and——­’ Mrs. Vane’s voice trembled and quivered.  She seemed almost as if she were going to cry.  Alie came and stood beside her, gently putting her arm round her mother and looking daggers at Bride.  Mamma was nervous and over-tired, she knew; she had had so much to go through lately.  How could Biddy be so naughty and unfeeling?  And yet, as the words passed through her mind, Rosalys hesitated.  Biddy was not really unfeeling—­it was not the word for her.  It was more as if she would not take the trouble to feel or to understand anything that was not her own special concern; there was a queer kind of laziness about her, which led to selfishness.  It was as if her mind and heart were asleep sometimes.

But she could feel.  Her face was all puckered up now; there was no temper or sullenness about it, but real pale-faced distress.

‘Mamma,’ she said brokenly, ’I didn’t, oh, truly, I didn’t mean it that way.  I know papa isn’t old enough to die; but I thought he was too big to be ill like that.’

‘Biddy,’ said Alie sternly, ’you are talking nonsense again.  You know big people are ill often, and sometimes they get better and sometimes they die.  Don’t you remember Mrs. Hay—­Meta Hay’s mamma?  She was ill and——­’

‘Yes, I quite forgot,’ exclaimed Biddy eagerly; ’I didn’t think.  Yes, Meta’s mamma was very ill, and she died.  I wish I’d remembered; and she wasn’t at all old like Grandmamma Vane.’

She spoke almost cheerfully.  Again Mrs. Vane glanced at her elder daughter.

‘It’s no use,’ she was beginning, but Alie interrupted.  How she wished the unfortunate Mrs. Hay had not been the first instance to occur to her!