When she had gone, Rosalind sat very silent with her two little sisters in the room. Sophy went on talking, while Rosalind mused and kept silent. She was so well accustomed to Sophy talking that she took little notice of it. When the little girl said anything of sufficient importance to penetrate the mist of self-abstraction in which her sister sat, Rosalind would answer her. But generally she took little notice. She woke up, however, in the midst of one of Sophy’s sentences which caught her ear, she could not tell why. “Think it’s a real lady?” Sophy said. It was at the end of a long monologue, during which her somewhat sharp voice had run on monotonous without variety. “Think it’s a real lady? There could be no ghost here, or if there was, why should it go to Johnny, who don’t understand, who has no sense. I think it’s a real lady that comes in to look at the children. Perhaps she is fond of children; perhaps she’s not in her right mind,” said Sophy; “perhaps she has lost a little boy like Johnny; perhaps--” here she clapped her hands together, which startled Rosalind greatly, and made little Amy, looking up with big eyes from within the curtain, jump from her seat; “I know who it is--it is the lady that gave him the toy.” “The toy--what toy?” “Oh, you know very well, Rosalind. That is what it is--the lady that had lost a child like Johnny, that brought him that thing that you wind up, that runs, that nurse says must have cost a mint of money. She says mint of money, and why shouldn’t I? I shall watch to-night, and try if I can’t see her,” cried Sophy; “that is the lady! and Johnny is such a little silly he has never found it out. But it is a _real_ lady, that I am quite certain, whatever the children say.” “But Amy has never seen anything, Sophy, or heard anything,” Rosalind said. “Oh, Rosalind, how soft you are! How could she help hearing about it, with Aunt Sophy and you rampaging in the room every night! You don’t know how deep she is; she would just go on and go on, and never tell.” “Amy, come here,” said Rosalind. “Oh, please, Rosy! I am in such an interesting part.” “Amy, come here--you can go back to your book after. Sophy says you have heard about the lady Johnny thinks he sees.” “Yes, Rosalind.” “You have known about her perhaps all the time, though we thought you slept so sound and heard nothing! You don’t mean that you have seen her too?” Amy stood by her sister’s knee, her hand reluctantly allowing itself to be held in Rosalind’s hand. She submitted to this questioning with the greatest reluctance, her little frame all instinct with eagerness to get away. But here she gave a hasty look upward as if drawn by the attraction of Rosalind’s eyes. How strange that no one had remarked how white and small she had grown! She gave her sister a solemn, momentary look, with eyes that seemed to expand as they looked, but said nothing. “Amy, can’t you answer me?” Rosalind cried.