Ay! we mun hurry home. Won't
mother be pleased with the bonny lot of heather we've got! Make
haste, Sally, maybe we shall have cockles for supper. I saw th'
cockleman's donkey turn up our way fra' Arnside."
Margaret touched Mary's hand, and the pressure in return told her
that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness
to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing:
she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and
bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of
her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as
many years slept in a grassy grave in the little churchyard beyond
Burton.
Alice's face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent.
"O Sally! I wish we'd told her. She thinks we were in church all
morning, and we've gone on deceiving her. If we'd told her at first
how it was--how sweet th' hawthorn smelt through the open church
door, and how we were on th' last bench in the aisle, and how it
were the first butterfly we'd seen this spring, and how it flew into
th' very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish we'd told
her.
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