"I know her," said Rose. "She snubbed me once awfully; she said I had no call to be coming here so often."
"Well, she has no more right in the house than you have," replied Christian. "But now you will be astonished."
She proceeded to relate the entire story--all that her mother had said, and all that Miss Neil had said; and having given the outlines, she further impressed the fact on Rose that she, Christian, was to be sent to school next week. She was to be sent to school, as it were, in the dark, and she was not to be told anything about it until the night before she went.
"They want to keep it dark until the very last minute," she said. "It is fun, isn't it, Rose?"
Her voice quivered. It quivered so much that it suddenly ended in a choking sob.
"Why Rosy," cried Christian, immensely touched, "you are not crying just because I must go?"
"Miss, I can't bear it," said Rose. "There's no one else ever took a mite of notice of me. I can't help thinking of myself altogether, miss; I can't truly. There's mother; she makes me sit at the dressmaking till I'm fit to faint, and I have no fun--never! I'm like you, miss; I can't make friends outside. I have one friend, and she seems to fill all my heart, and you are she; and if we are to be parted, Miss---- Oh, Miss Christian! I can't--I can't bear it."
Christian, notwithstanding her bravery, found herself crying also. She put her arms around Rose, buried her head in her neck, and sobbed.
"It is awful," she said after a pause. "I did not think so much of parting from you, Rosy, but it is quite terrible; for it isn't even as if I were going to an ordinary school, and coming back for the holidays; but I am going to a severe-discipline one, and I am not coming back--I am to spend the holidays and all there. I might as well be dead, mightn't I, Rose?"
"It is," said Rose, "for if you were dead I could go on Sundays and take flowers to your grave; I could--I could. Oh, it is much worse! I would save up and buy 'em; no one should hinder me. It is much worse nor if you were dead."
The pathetic picture so conjured up of Rose bending over her grave and putting flowers there was so affecting that Christian sobbed again. After a time, however, she ceased crying.