e wasn't good like
Maudie, about having tried in vain to be good, and that her birdie was
dead and God didn't love her either, always ending up that it was a good
thing Maudie was better, "wasn't it, Lucy?" Though when poor Lucy choked
down her tears to answer cheerfully "Yes, indeed, Miss Hoodie," poor
Hoodie could not hear her voice, and began again the same weary
murmurings.

It was very sad for them all--most sad of all for Hoodie's mother, whose
heart grew sore as she listened to her poor little girl's faint words.
It seemed to her that never before had she understood her child, and the
great longing for love that had been hidden in her queer-tempered,
fanciful nature.

"Oh, Hoodie darling, we do love you--dearly, dearly," she would
sometimes say as she bent over her; but the bright eyes, too bright by
far, gazed up without seeing, and the weary little head, shorn of its
pretty tangle of fuzzy hair, moved restlessly on the pillow, while
Hoodie kept talking about her dead bird and nobody loving her, through
the slow weary hours while life and death were fighting over her little
bed.

"If she dies without knowing us again, it will break my heart," said
Hoodie's mother to the doctor; and what could he say, poor man, but
shake his head sorrowfully in sympathy?

They tried to prevent Maudie knowing how ill Hoodie was, but it was
impossible. When people are ill, or recovering from illness, they seem
to guess things in a way that is sometimes quite astonishing, and so it
was with Maudie. She was now much better--she had been half-dressed and
lifted on to a sofa in her own room some days ago, but when she found
out about Hoodie, she fretted so dreadfully that it threatened to make
her ill again.

"Oh, do let me see her!" she cried. "I don't mind if she's too ill to
know me. I don't mind if she can't speak to me, but I must see her. Poor
Hoodie, dear little Hoodie," she went on, the tears streaming down her
face. "Oh, mamma, I don't think I was always very kind to her. I used to
tell her we'd be happier without her, but I _do_ love her. Oh, do let me
see her!"

For unfortunately, through hearing some of the servants talking, Maudie
knew some part of what Hoodie had been saying in her unconsciousness,
and it was this that was distressing her so greatly.

Oh, children dear, remember this--there is no pain so terrible, no
suffering so without comfort, as the feeling sorrow _too late_ for
unkindness or want of tendern