And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had mapped out for herself. “You know, dear,” she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, “I cannot help feeling that this--this terrible blow means more to you than it does to us.” “Why?” inquired Dora practically. Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which do not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning silence is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly nervous before this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter of years and calendar months. “Why?” asked Dora again. Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered. “Well, dear, I thought perhaps--I always thought that my poor boy entertained some feeling--you understand?” “No,” replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing deliberation of manner, “I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,' are you referring to Jem?” Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest martyr. “Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him--quite suddenly--we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least the good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?” “Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,” said the well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally misunderstood. “I have no doubt of that,” returned Dora, with an equanimity which was again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. “But in future you will be consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on my behalf at all.” “As you will, dear; as you will,” in the hopeless tone of age, experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush headlong down the hill. “Yes,” returned Dora calmly; “I know that, thank you. And now, I think, we had better change the subject.” The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it were, whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other food for the mind, and presently Dora left. The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained--the knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There can be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so many talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our lives in conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why. In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle--a fight is always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime. CHAPTER XV THE TOUCH OF NATURE