"It's just too 'licious!" she said. "Is this one of the things God
gives us because we are rich? Isn't it kind of Lord Jesus to make us
rich? Don't you love Him very, very much, mother?"
Mrs. Ogilvie always turned aside when Sibyl spoke to her about her
love for the Lord Jesus. Not that she considered herself by any means
an irreligious woman. She went to church always once, and sometimes
twice on Sunday. She subscribed to any number of charities, and as the
little girl now spoke her eyes became full of a soft light.
"We can have a bazaar here," she said, "a bazaar for the Home for
Incurables at Watleigh. Lady Severn was talking to me about it last
night, and said how terribly it needed funds. Sibyl, when father comes
back we will have a great big bazaar here at lovely Silverbel, and a
marquee on the lawn, and we will ask all the most charitable people in
London to take stalls; some of the big-wigs, you know."
"Big-wigs?" said Sibyl, "what are they?"
"People, my dear child, who are high up in the social scale."
"I don't understand, mother," answered Sibyl. "Oh, do look at this
rose, did you ever see such a perfect beauty? May I pick it, mother?
It is just perfect, isn't it, not quite full out and yet not a bud.
I'd like very much to send it to my ownest father."
"Silly child! Yes, of course you may pick it, but it will be dead long
before it reaches him."
"It's heart won't be dead," said Sibyl. She did not know why she made
the latter remark. She often did say things which she but half
understood. She carefully picked the rose and fastened it into the
front of her white dress. When she returned to town that evening she
put the rose in water and looked at it with affectionate interest.
"What a pretty flower! Where did my darling get it?" said nurse.
"At Silverbel, the beautiful, beautiful place that father is going to
buy when he is rich. You can't think how good mother is growing,
nursie; she is getting better and better every day."
"H'm!" said nurse.
"Why do you make those sort of noises when I speak of my mother? I
don't like it," said the child. "But I must tell you about Silverbel.
Mother says it is practicalically ours now. I don't quite know what
she means by practicalically, but I suppose she means that it is
almost our place. Anyhow, when my dearest rich father comes back it
will be ours, and we are going to make poor Mr. Holman quite rich, and
you, darling nursie, quite rich, and--and others quite rich. We are
going to have a great big bazaar at Silverbel, and the _big-wigs_ are
coming to it. Isn't it a funny word! perhaps you don't know what
big-wigs are, but I do."
Nurse laughed.
"Eat your supper and go to bed, Miss Sibyl. You are staying up a great
deal too late, and you are learning things you had better know nothing
about."
Meanwhile Mrs. Ogilvie downstairs was having a consultation with her
lawyer.
"I don't want to lose the place," she said. "My husband is safe to be
satisfied with my decision."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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