d_ at him--I did--I
_did_!' she cried, wringing her hands. 'And he looked so tired! And on
the way home Amelie mimicked him--and his voice--and his queer ways;
and I laughed. Oh, what a beast I was! Oh, mother, and I told you his
name, and you never--never--said a word!'

The child flung herself on the floor, her feet tucked under her, her
hands clasped round her knees, swaying backwards and forwards in a
tempest of excited feeling, hardly knowing what she said.

Phoebe looked at her, bewildered; then she removed her hand, and
Carrie saw the telegram. She threw herself on it, read the address,
gulping, then the words:

'A messenger!' She understood that no more than her mother. It meant a
letter, perhaps? But she fastened on 'immediately'--'welcome.'

And presently--all in a moment--she leapt to her feet, and began to
dance and spring about the room. And as Phoebe watched her, startled
and open-mouthed, wondering if this was all the reproach that Carrie
was ever going to make her, the flushed and joyous creature came and
flung her arms round Phoebe's neck, so that the fair hair and the
brown were all in a confusion together, and the child's cheek was on
her mother's.

'Mummy!--and I was only five, and you weren't so very old--only
seven years older than I am now--and you thought father was tired
of you--and you went off to Canada right away. My!--it was plucky of
you--I will say that for you. And if you hadn't gone, I should never
have seen George. But--oh, mummy, mummy!'--this between laughing and
crying--'I do guess you were just a little fool! I guess you were!'

Miss Anna sat downstairs listening to the murmur of those hurrying
voices above her in Phoebe's room. She was darning a tablecloth,
with the Manchester paper beside her; and she sat peculiarly erect, a
little stern and pinched,--breathing protest.

It was extraordinary how Carrie had taken it. These were your Canadian
ways, she supposed. No horror of anything--no shyness. Looking a thing
straight in the face, at a moment's notice--with a kind of humorous
common sense--refusing altogether to cry over spilt milk, even
such spilt milk as this--in a hurry, simply, to clear it up! A mere
metaphorical refusal to cry, this--for, after all, there had been
tears. But the immediate rebound, the determination to be cheerful,
though the heavens fell, had been so amazing! The child had begun
to laugh before her tears were dry--letting loose a flood of sharp,
shr