Part 44 (1/2)

'Yes, I know Aunt Lily does now; but, oh! if you had seen Uncle Alfred's face, and heard Uncle Regie,' and Dolly began to sob again as they returned on her. 'I see them whenever I shut my eyes!'

'Darling,' whispered Mysie, 'when I feel bad at night, I always kneel up in bed and say my prayers again!'

'Do you ever feel bad?'

'Oh yes, when I'm frightened, or if I've been naughty, and haven't told mamma. Shall we do it, Dolly?'

'I don't know what that has to do with it, but we'll try.'

'Mamma told me something to say out of.'

The two little girls rose up, with clasped hands in their bed, and Mysie whispered very low, but so that her companion heard, and said with her a few childish words of confession, pleading and entreating for strength, and then the Lord's Prayer, and the sweet old verse:--

'I lay my body down to sleep, I give my soul to Christ to keep, Wake I at morn, as wake I never, I give my soul to Christ for ever.'

'Ah! but I am afraid of that. I don't like it,' said Dolores, as they lay down again.

'It won't make one never wake,' returned Mysie; 'and I do like to give my soul to Christ. It seems so to rest one, and make one not afraid.'

'I don't know,' said Dolores; 'and why did you say the Lord's Prayer?

That hasn't anything to do with it!'

'Oh, Dolly, when He is our Father near, though our own dear fathers are far away, and there's deliver us from evil--all that hurts us, you know-and forgive us. It's all there.'

'I never thought that,' said Dolores. 'I think you have some different prayers from mine. Old nurse taught me long ago. I wish you would always say yours with me. You make them nicer.'

Mysie answered with a hug, and a murmured 'If I can,' and offered to say the 121st Psalm, her other step to comfort, and, as she said it, she resolved in her mind whether she could grant Dolores's request; for she was not sure whether she should be allowed to leave her room before saying her own, and she I knew enough of Dolores by this time to be aware that to say she would ask mamma's leave would put an end to all.

'I know,' was her final decision; 'I'll say my own first, and then come to Dolly's room.'

But by that time Dolores was asleep, even if Mysie had not been too sleepy to speak.

She meant to have rushed to the room she shared with Valetta before it was time to get up, but Lots found the black head and the brown together on Dolores's pillow, wrapped in slumber; and though Mysie flew home as soon as she was well awake, Mrs. Halfpenny descended on her while she was yet in her bath, and inflicted a sharp scolding for the malpractice of getting into her cousin's bed.

'But Dolly was so miserable, nurse, and mamma was too tired to call.'

'Then you should have called me, Miss Mysie, and I'd have sorted her well! You kenned well 'tis a thing not to be done and at your age; ye should have minded your duties better.'

And nurse even intercepted Mysie on her way to Dolores's room, and declared she would have no messing and gossiping in one another's rooms.

Miss Mysie was getting spoilt among strangers.

Mysie went down with a strong sense of having been disobedient, as well as of grief for Dolores's disappointment. Happily mamma was late that morning, and n.o.body was in her room but Primrose. Poor Mysie had soon, with tears in her eyes, confessed her transgression. Her mother's tears, to her great surprise, were on her cheek together with a kiss. 'Dear child, I am not displeased. Indeed, I am not; I will tell nurse. It must not be a habit, but this was an exception, and I am only thankful you could comfort her.

'And, mamma, may I go now to her. She said I could help her to say her prayers, and I think she only has little baby ones that her nurse taught her and she doesn't see into the Lord's Prayer.'

'My dear, my dear, if you can help her to pray you will do the thing most sure to be a blessing to her of all.'