"WHERE are you going, Gabrielle?" said her mother, as one morning, shortly after Claude's accident, the bright French girl put on a dainty little hat, and placing two rosy-checked apples in a small wicker-work basket, was preparing to go out.
"Ah, maman," she answered, "I was just going to tell thee I was setting off to the Grove to ask for the pauvre petit garcon—André's protégé, we call him. Was it not a merciful thing that André should have passed by that part of the common and found the child lying behind a clump of furze bushes, where no one would have thought of looking for him? You know, ma chère mère, the doctor thinks the child had caught his foot in a hole and fallen (there are so many of those small holes in the common), and the fall had stunned him, so he lay motionless, and never heard his name called again and again by his father and friends. Poor Mam'selle Warner! They do say she blames herself for not taking care of the child; and André declares her face was white with fright. I am so sorry for her."
"Pauvre petite fille!" said Mrs. M'Ivor, "She must have plenty to do with all those motherless children, for Miss Vernon, on dit, is not at all strong. Yes, go, ma fille, and find out how they all are. I wish Miss Warner would come to see me, as I am not yet strong enough to walk so far as the Grove, and I would like to try and comfort the motherless girl, whose father has been so kind to us."
Priscilla Warner was seated alone in the parlour of the Grove, cast down and weary. Claude was still very ill, for fever had set in; and she was feeling intense grief that he never asked for her, though he would smile when she entered the room.
Then her father, her loved father, had spoken sternly to her, and told her plainly he was sorely disappointed in her, and had forbidden her to take out little Ruth even into the garden unless nurse or Miss Vernon were with her. Against this sentence she had protested strongly.
"O father, don't say that—please don't! Surely you can't think I would neglect Ruth, my darling little sister. Oh, don't wean her love from me; leave me that at least! O father, don't!"
But Dr. Warner was not moved by her entreaties. "I wish to wean no one's love from you, Priscilla," he said; "but I cannot have the child's life perhaps sacrificed to your carelessness. You don't seem to have won the children's love as you ought to have done. I fear you seek your own pleasure before theirs. Your mother never did that, Priscilla; it was always others first and herself last with her. I am disappointed in you, my daughter. You can go now; and remember what I have said."
Priscilla moved to the door, her heart too full to admit of her saying a word; but her father's voice recalled her:
"Stay a moment, Priscilla. What were you doing with this book?" And he produced the cherished "Treatise on Astronomy."
"Studying it, father," she replied, and as she spoke she looked him full in the face.