The Christmas tree was standing in the bow-window, decorated with fir cones and lighted candles, and below it was a little crèche, with the Madonna and the Christchild, and the ox and ass standing by the manger. Beside it was a table, on which Philomène’s Christmas presents had been spread, and it was when these had been looked at and admired, that Isolde sat down on the floor close to the crèche, and drew Philomène towards her.
“Little cushat,” said she, “on this night, of all nights in the year, when we are thinking of the best and dearest mother that ever was or will be, I want to tell you that Daddy has asked me to be your mother. Are you a little bit glad?”
Philomène was very glad, too glad to speak at first. Then a shadow fell. “Godmother,” she whispered, “there is just one thing I should like to say, but I’m afraid it may hurt you. I was thinking that you would want me to call you “Mother,” as though I were really your own little girl, and I wish I were, or at least I wish I had been to start with, because you know how I love you, Godmother dear, and I should have been ever so glad if you had been my real mother properly from the beginning. But you aren’t, you see, and it seems to me it would be better not to call you ‘Mother,’ nor to make-believe, but to go on calling you Godmother just as I used to do, and to keep ‘Mother’ for when I meet my own mother later on. Don’t you think she might feel a little bit sorry and left out if I had used up that name for someone else, even for you?”
“You are right,” said Isolde in a very low voice, “we will not defraud the dead.”
The next day Philomène went to announce the news to Sweet William. She sat opposite to him on the toadstool which she had come to consider her own, with her elbows propped on the mushroom table between them, as she had sat many and many a time during the past year.
“I quite see that it cannot be helped,” said Sweet William, when she had finished speaking, “but I am sorry.”
A startled look came into Philomène’s eyes. “What do you mean?” she asked uneasily, “why should you be sorry?”
“For one thing, you will not live at Sideview any longer,” replied Sweet William, gravely. This had not yet occurred to Philomène, and now that she realised it she put her head down on the mushroom, and cried bitterly.