But when she cried out as she did after an interval, “I love him!  I love him!” then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy.  “And I am going to marry him,” I heard her add, standing up, as she said it, very straight and tall.

Marry!  I knew what that meant.  A long aisle in a church; women in white and big music in the air behind.  I had been flower-girl at a wedding once and had not forgotten.  We had had ice cream and cake and—­

But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and all the words which followed—­words which burned their way into my infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never be eradicated.  He spoke them—­spoke them all; she never answered again after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had stood, on her bed alongside mine.

I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me.  I wonder she did not hear it.  But she heard nothing; and after awhile she was so still I fell asleep.  But I woke again.  Something hot had fallen on my cheek.  I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even when I felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother’s eye.

For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my tremors only.  And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep again with her arm still passionately embracing me.

In the morning, she was gone.

It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur and I were trying to play,—­trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people, and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry; and comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the door opened and Father stepped in.

It was a great event—­any visit from him to the nursery—­and we both dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him scold our beautiful sister.

Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation he took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood waiting with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but manfully clenched in full readiness for attack.  That this display of pigmy chivalry was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now, for Father did not look like himself or act like himself any more than he had the night before.