"Wait till he has been kind," said Cicely, shaking her head. "I always liked the naughty little girl best, not that complacent smiling creature who knew she had been good, and whom everybody praised. Oh, what a pity that the world is not like a fairy tale! where the good are always rewarded, and even the naughty, when they are sorry. If we were to help any number of old women, what would it matter now?" "But I suppose," said Mab, somewhat wistfully, for she distrusted her sister's words, which she did not understand, and was afraid people might think Cicely Broad Church, "I suppose whatever may happen in the meantime, it all comes right in the end?" "Papa is not so very far from the end, and it has not come right for him." "O Cicely, how can you talk so! Papa is not so old. He will live years and years yet!" cried Mab, her eyes filling. "I hope so. Oh, I hope so! I did not think of merely living. But he cannot get anything very great now, can he, to make up for so long waiting? So long--longer," said Cicely, with a little awe, thinking of that enormous lapse of time, "than we have been alive!" "If he gets the living, he will not want anything more," said Mab, blithely working away with her charcoal. "How delightful it will be! More than double what we have now? Fancy! After all, you will be able to furnish as you said." "But not in amber satin," said Cicely, beguiled into a smile. "In soft, soft Venetian stuff, half green, half blue, half no colour at all. Ah! she has moved! Cicely, Cicely, go and talk to her, for heaven's sake, or my picture will be spoilt!" "If you please, miss, I can't stop here no longer. It's time as I was looking after the children. How is Betsy to remember in the middle of her cooking the right time to give 'em their cod-liver oil?" "I'll go and look after the children," said Cicely. "What you have got to do, Annie, is to stop here." Upon which Annie burst into floods of tears, and fell altogether out of pose. "There ain't no justice in it!" she said. "I'm put up here to look like a gipsy or a beggar; and mother will never get over it, after all her slaving and toiling to get me decent clothes!"