“Where have you been?” she asked querulously, her voice husky and feeble, as if from a severe cold.  “Why are you so late?”

Ida did not answer at once, but went straight to the bed and offered the accustomed kiss.  Her mother waved her off.

“No, no; don’t kiss me.  Can’t you see what a sore throat I’ve got?  You might catch it.  And I haven’t got you any tea,” she went on, her face growing to a calmer expression as she gazed at the child “Ain’t I a naughty mother?  But it serves you half right for being late.  Come and kiss me; I don’t think it’s catching.  No, perhaps you’d better not.”

But Ida started forward at the granted leave, and kissed her warmly.

“There now,” went on the hoarse voice complainingly, “I shouldn’t wonder if you catch it, and we shall both be laid up at once.  Oh, Ida, I do feel that poorly, I do!  It’s the draught under the door; what else can it be?  I do, I do feel that poorly!”

She began to cry miserably.  Ida forgot all about the tale she had to tell; her own eyes overflowed in sympathy.  She put her arm under her mother’s neck, and pressed cheek to cheek tenderly.

“Oh, how hot you are, mother!  Shall I get you a cup of tea, dear?  Wouldn’t it make your throat better?”

“Perhaps it would; I don’t know.  Don’t go away, not just yet.  You’ll have to be a mother to me to-night, Ida.  I almost feel I could go to sleep, if you held me like that.”

She closed her eyes, but only for a moment, then started up anxiously.

“What am I thinking about!  Of course you want your tea.”

“No, no; indeed I don’t, mother.”

“Nonsense; of course you do.  See, the kettle is on the bob, and I think it’s full.  Go away; you make me hotter.  Let me see you get your tea, and then perhaps it’ll make me feel I could drink a cup.  There, you’ve put your hair all out of order; let me smooth it.  Don’t trouble to lay the cloth; just use the tray; it’s in the cupboard.”

Ida obeyed, and set about the preparations.  Compare her face with that which rested sideways upon the pillows, and the resemblance was as strong as could exist between two people of such different ages:  the same rich-brown hair, the same strongly-pencilled eye-brows; the deep-set and very dark eyes, the fine lips, the somewhat prominent jaw-bones, alike in both.  The mother was twenty-eight, the daughter ten, yet the face on the pillow was the more childish at present.  In the mother’s eyes was a helpless look, a gaze of unintelligent misery, such as one could not conceive on Ida’s countenance; her lips, too, were weakly parted, and seemed trembling to a sob, whilst sorrow only made the child close hers the firmer.  In the one case a pallor not merely of present illness, but that wasting whiteness which is only seen on faces accustomed to borrow artificial hues; in the other, a healthy pearl-tint, the gleamings and gradations of a perfect complexion.  The one a child long lost on weary, woful ways, knowing, yet untaught by, the misery of desolation; the other a child still standing upon the misty threshold of unknown lands, looking around for guidance, yet already half feeling that the sole guide and comforter was within.