'On the contrary, it pleases me!' replied Mildred, but she blushed a little under the scrutiny of this strange girl.
'You are undemonstrative, so am I to most people; but directly I saw your face and heard you speak I knew yours was a true nature, and I was anxious to win you for my friend; you do not know how sadly I want one,' she continued, her voice trembling a little. 'One cannot live without sympathy.'
'It is not meant that we should do so,' returned Mildred, softly.
'I believe mine to be an almost isolated case,' returned Ethel. 'No mother, no----' she checked herself, turned pale and hurried on, 'with only a childlike memory of what brother-love really is, and a faint-off remembrance of a little white wasted face resting on a pillow strewn with lilies. I was very young then, but I remember how I cried when they told me my baby-sister was an angel in heaven.'
'How old were you when your brothers died?' asked Mildred, gently. Ethel's animation had died away, and a look of deep sadness now crossed her face.
'I was only ten, Rupert was twelve, and Sidney fourteen; such fine manly boys, Sid. especially, and so good to me. Mamma never got over their death; and then I lost her; it seems so lonely their leaving me behind. Sometimes I wonder for what purpose I am left, and if I have much to suffer before I am allowed to join them?' and Ethel's eyes grew fixed and dreamy, till Mildred's sympathetic voice roused her.
'I should think nothing can replace a brother. When I was young I used to wish I were one of a large family. I remember envying a girl who told me she had seven sisters.'
'I wonder what it would be like to have a sister? I mean if Ella had lived--she would be sixteen now. I used to have all sorts of strange fancies about her when I was a child. Mamma once read me Longfellow's poem of _Resignation_, and it made a great impression on me. You remember the words, Miss Lambert?' and Ethel repeated in her fresh sweet voice--
'"Not as a child shall we again behold her, For when with raptures wild, In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child.
"But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace, And beautiful with all the soul's expansion Shall we behold her face."