"Don't you? Mamsie said you would. She said you'd grumble, and if you did, she'd teach you not . . . Are you ill?" pursued the child, gazing hard. "You haven't got a pretty red in your cheeks, like Mamsie. I'm glad that other ill lady didn't come, 'cause she wouldn't have let me make a noise. And Mamsie is glad too. She cried, and didn't want her. And she said this room would do for you!" "Yes, of course." Lettice was keenly conscious of the imitative contempt in the shrill little voice, and yet more keenly conscious of the slight to Sissie. "Mamsie doesn't like ill people: nor I don't. Are you ill?" "No." "Will you play with me? I'll like you, if you will. I want somebody to run races. Susanna is too old, and Bella can't, and Mamsie gets a stitch. Have you got a stitch? Will you have a nice big race?" "By-and-by I will, Keith. Not just now." CHAPTER IX. A NEW HOME. KEITH stood with big blue eyes fixed upon Lettice's face, as she leant against the foot of the bed. "Why not now?" he wanted to know. "'Cause you're tired? And you've got to unpack all that lot of boxes?" "Some, not all." "And then you'll have a jolly race with me, and ever so many games?" "Perhaps—" was the utmost that Lettice could force herself to say. She had never felt more out of tune for boisterous fun. Keith pranced off, banging the door, and she remained where he left her, drooping in a dead blank of depression and loneliness, the like of which she had not before known. Always she had had her home, her sister and brother, her right to love and be loved by them: and now she was alone. Nothing to live for: nobody to care for: no one to live and care for her: only Felix far-away out of reach, and the kind Valentines scarcely more accessible. A sense of dreariness weighed her down. It was not so much active pain as dull pressure—the harder to be resisted. Her head throbbed with dull responsiveness: and a wave of temptation to despair swept over her. What hope, what interest in life remained? A cup of tea might have brought relief to body and mind, but the cup of tea was not forthcoming: and she of course did not realise, as at such times one does not, how far the depression was purely physical. Dropping her hat, Lettice crept to the side of the bed and lay down upon it—lay flat and still, with closed eyes; for more than an hour, never stirring a finger. Nobody came, and in later years, this hour always stood out as one of the worst and bitterest phases through which she had had to pass. Worse even than when she had first learned Cecilia's true state; worse than the morning of Cecilia's death. For then she had had the help of kind faces and voices around, though they could not touch her sorrow: and now she was utterly alone. Minutes had never dragged past with such slowness. If one afternoon were so interminable, what would the whole of life be? thought the poor girl in her distress.