Hoodie sat quite quiet, still leaning her head on her hands, doing nothing and seeming to wish for nothing.

"Are you not well to-day, Miss Hoodie?" Lucy asked at last.

"Yes," said Hoodie, "I'm kite well, and I think Maudie'll be better to-morrow."

But all day long she continued very, very quiet, and once or twice Lucy wondered if she should let Hoodie's mother or Martin know how strange the child seemed.

"I'll wait till to-morrow, any way," she decided. "It seems a shame to trouble them more to-day, for this has been much the worst day with Miss Maudie, I fancy. It's to be hoped it's the turn."

And when to-morrow morning came she was glad she had not troubled them, for Hoodie seemed better and brighter than for some days past. She did not seem impatient for the news of Maudie, not as impatient as Lucy herself, who ran along to tap at Martin's door as soon as she awoke, and came back with a relieved face to tell Hoodie that the news was much better this morning, Maudie seemed really to have got the turn.

"I knew she'd be better to-day," said Hoodie, composedly. "Didn't I tell you so, Lucy?"

And when they went out into the garden she carefully gathered a nosegay for Maudie, choosing the prettiest flowers and tying them together with a piece of ribbon she took off one of her dolls.

"Take those to Maudie's room, Lucy," she said, "and tap at the door, and tell Martin they're for Miss Maudie with Miss Hoodie's love, and she's very glad she's better."



"Miss Maudie will be pleased, I'm sure," said Lucy, thinking to herself as she said so how very pretty Miss Hoodie was looking. Her eyes were so bright, and her cheeks so rosy, and on her face there was such a pretty smile while she was arranging the flowers, that Lucy could not resist stooping down to kiss her.

"Never was a sweeter child than she can be when she likes," said Lucy to herself, as she made her way with the nosegay and the message to Maudie's room.

Altogether things were beginning to look much brighter again, and, reassured as to Maudie's being really better, Mrs. Caryll went to bed that night for the first time for a fortnight, with a lighter heart.

"Maudie is much better," she had written that evening to Cousin Magdalen, "and it is not now likely that Hoodie will get the fever, as so many days have passed. Somehow I have never felt very uneasy about Hoodie from the first, though 'by rights,' as the children say, she should have had it and not poor Maudie, as it all came through her disobedience. And even if she had got it, I should not have felt so anxious as about Maudie—Hoodie is so very strong. But I hope now that we need not be anxious about either, and that our troubles are passing over."

Poor Mrs. Caryll would not have written so cheerfully had she known that that very afternoon Lucy's fears about Hoodie had again been aroused. The little girl would not eat anything at tea-time, though she drank eagerly two or three cups of milk. And after tea she said her head ached, and she was so sleepy and tired that Lucy thought it well to put her early to bed.

"Such a pity," thought Lucy, "just when she was looking so bright this morning. I wish I could think she had just caught cold, but the weather's so fine, it's not likely."

All night Hoodie tossed about uneasily. She started and talked in her sleep, and by morning she looked so flushed and strange that Lucy felt that she must at once tell Martin, and that there could be no question of Hoodie's getting up and being dressed. She wanted to get up, poor little girl, but her head felt so giddy when she raised it from the pillow that she was glad to lay it down again. And before the day was many hours older, there was no doubt that Hoodie had got the fever.

She knew it herself, though nothing was said about it before her, and she had her own thoughts about it in her mind, which she expressed to Lucy when no one else was there.

"I've got the affection fever, Lucy," she said. "I'm sure I have, 'cos I asked God to make Maudie better 'cos it wasn't her fault, and I said I wouldn't mind if I had it, 'cos it was my fault."

And poor Lucy, not knowing what to say, turned away to hide the tears in her eyes.

"I don't think we need be anxious about her," said Mrs. Caryll to the doctor, "she is so much stronger than Maudie."

But Dr. Reynolds did not reply very heartily; the truth being that he saw from the first that Hoodie was likely to be much more ill than Maudie had been. And Hoodie herself from the first, too, seemed to have a strange, babyish instinct that it was so.

"I'm glad Maudie is better," she said often during the first day or two, to Lucy, "'cos you know it wasn't her fault. I don't mind having the affection fever, but it is rather sore. Everybody loves Maudie so, it's a good thing she's better."

"But everybody loves you too, Miss Hoodie," said Lucy, tenderly, "specially when you're such a good, patient little girl."

Hoodie made a movement as if she would have shaken her head, only the poor little head was too heavy and aching to shake.

"No, Lucy," she said, "not like Maudie, 'cos she's so good, and I'm not. I did try, but I had to leave off. And my bird's dead, you know, though I did ask God to take care of it every time I said my prayers. But I'm glad God's made Maudie better. I 'appose it's 'cos she's good. But I don't mind having the fever—not now my bird's dead, 'cos he did love me, didn't he, Lucy?"

Her mind was beginning to wander, and for many days and nights Hoodie knew nothing of anything that passed about her. Sometimes she seemed in a sort of stupor, at others she would talk incessantly in her little weak childish voice, till it made one's heart ache to hear her. She did not suffer so much from her throat as Maudie had done, though otherwise so much more ill. The fever seemed to have seized her in its strong, cruel arms with so hard a grasp, that often and often it appeared to those about her as if it never again would let her go, but would carry her away out of their sight, without her even being able to bid them good-bye—murmuring ever those sad words which seemed to be burnt into her childish brain, about nobody loving her because she 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 tenderness to others—little sharp words which did not seem so bad at the time, careless or selfish neglect of the wishes we could have gratified with just a little trouble—how they all rise up afterwards and refuse to be forgotten! Our grief may then exaggerate our past unkindness perhaps, and, as is the way with our weak human nature, things out of our reach seem of double value; the affection we knew to be always at hand we never prized enough till we lost it. But should we not take this as a warning? Avoid the habit of small unkindnesses, of sharp, hurting words—even though in your heart you do not mean them. Try, my darlings, every hour and every day, to behave to each other as you would wish to have behaved, were this day to be your last together. Then indeed even the sore parting of death would lose half its bitterness—the kingdom of Heaven would already have begun in your own hearts—the happy kingdom where there is neither sorrow nor bitterness, nor tears—the kingdom over which reigns the beautiful Spirit of Love.

At last there came a day on which the doctor said that without risk Maudie might be taken to see Hoodie—only to see her—there was no thought of her speaking to Hoodie, or Hoodie to her, for the little girl was lying in a stupor—quite quiet and unconscious, and out of this stupor, though he did not say so, Dr. Reynolds had but little hope of her waking to life again. The fever had let her go at last, had thrown her down, as it were, careless of how she fell, and the poor little shaken worn-out Hoodie that it had left there, white and thin and lifeless, hardly seemed as if it could ever rouse up again to live and talk and play—and there was nothing to do but to wait.

So Maudie was carried into the room where this unfamiliar Hoodie was lying, and allowed to look at her poor little face and to cry quietly to herself as she looked. In whose arms, children, do you think she was carried? It was in Magdalen's. When she heard of the trouble that had fallen over her little friends she could not rest till she came to them. She had had the fever long ago, she wrote; she was so strong that nursing never made her ill or tired—she could sit up a whole week of nights without being knocked up. But when she arrived she found that in the way of actual nursing there was little to do. Hoodie lay still and lifeless—all the restlessness gone; for her indeed, it seemed to Magdalen, there would never again be anything to do, no care and tenderness to bestow—and the thought brought burning tears to poor Magdalen's eyes, though she bravely drove them back, and did her best to comfort Maudie and her mother.

"Cousin Magdalen," said Maudie, when they had sat for a few minutes by Hoodie's bed, "Cousin Magdalen, can't we do anything to make her better? Oh, dear, dear little Hoodie, oh, how I wish I had never been the least bit not kind to her."

Then raising herself in her cousin's arms, she knelt on her lap, and leaning her head on Magdalen's shoulder, she said, while her voice was broken with sobs—

"Oh, dear God, please make Hoodie better. We do so love her—and she doesn't know how we love her, because I've been unkind to her sometimes. Oh, dear God, please make her better."

And then, her voice changing a little, as if she were afraid that her simple entreaty was hardly solemn enough to be considered "prayer," she added, like Hoodie, "For Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

A slight movement just then made itself heard in Hoodie's cot; a flutter more than anything else. Magdalen, gently putting Maudie on her chair, started up in alarm. She knew that any change in Hoodie was now most critical. She bent over the child, the better to observe her. A faint smile came fluttering to Hoodie's face, and in another moment, with a little effort, she opened her eyes. But she did not seem to see, or if she saw, she did not recognize, Magdalen, for the word that she whispered was "Maudie."

Low as it was Maudie heard it.

"She's speaking to me," she exclaimed. "Yes, Hoodie dear, what is it?"

Magdalen lifted her on to the bed. She could not refuse, though afraid that perhaps she was not doing right. The two little sisters lay close together.

"Maudie," whispered Hoodie again, in a little, weak, faint voice. "Maudie, I was waking, and I heard you speaking so nice. I heard you say 'Please God make Hoodie better, 'cos we do so love her.' I didn't know that, Maudie, I've been so naughty. But if you want me to get better I'll try. God's been very kind except that He let birdie die. But I love you better than birdie, Maudie, and perhaps God'll make me better too."

She could not say any more, but she smiled again as Maudie, put her arms round her and covered her face with loving kisses. Then Martin, whom Magdalen had summoned, gave her the wine the doctor had ordered in case of her awaking; Hoodie took it meekly, and then turning her head on the pillow murmured gently, "I'm very sleepy, but I'll soon get better. The affection fever was very sore, Maudie."

Hoodie was right. From that moment she did begin to get better. They were still very anxious about her—there were many days still to pass before it was quite sure that she was out of danger, and for many more after that she was so weak that it hardly seemed as if a child's usual strength could ever come back to her. But in time all came right, and terribly ill as she had been, the fever left no lasting harm. And the life that began for the two little sisters from this time was a bright and peaceful one—they had learnt to value each other and each other's love as never before, and from the moment that it came home to Hoodie, that she really took into her fanciful little heart, how dearly she was loved, half her troubles seemed at an end. Day by day she learned new ways in which even she, a little simple child, might help and comfort and cheer those about her—she lost the old sore feeling of being nothing but a trouble and a worry, an "alvays naughty" Hoodie, and never again was any one tempted to say that among the fairies invited to baby Julian's christening, those of sweet temper and unselfishness had been forgotten.

* * * * *

They are grown-up now—much more than grown-up. If you met them in the street, if they came to call on your mother some day, you would not guess they were quiet little Maudie and queer-tempered Hoodie. And as for Hec and Duke!—they could jump you up on their great strong shoulders as easily as the ogres they used to be so fond of making up stories about. There is only one thing which, if you heard it said, as it often is, might remind you of the children I have been telling you about. Men and women as they are, separated sometimes by half the world, it has always been remarked of them how much they love each other—brothers and sisters in deed, as well as in name, friends tried and true to each other through all the difficulties and sorrows and troubles which have come to them as to every one else in this world of many colours; of rainy as well as of sunny days—of discouragement and disappointment, but of happiness too—and love through all.

Cousin Magdalen's dark hair is beginning to get white now, but still I feel sure you would think her very pretty. Did she ever write out the story that she promised to tell Hoodie and the others some day? By the bye I must not forget to ask her the next time we meet.



Books by Mrs. Molesworth

PUBLISHED BY

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MEG LANGHOLME; or, The Day after To-morrow. Eight Illustrations by W. Rainey

PHILIPPA. Eight Illustrations by J. Finnemore

OLIVIA. Eight Illustrations by Robert Barnes

BLANCHE. Eight Illustrations by Robert Barnes

ROBIN REDBREAST. Six Illustrations by R. Barnes

WHITE TURRETS. Four Illustrations by W. Rainey

IMOGEN; or, Only Eighteen. Four Illustrations by H. A. Bone

THE NEXT-DOOR HOUSE. Six Illustrations by W. Hatherell

THE GREEN CASKET, AND OTHER STORIES. Illustrated

THE BEWITCHED LAMP. Frontispiece by R. Barnes

NESTA; or, Fragments of a Little Life

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THE END