Valetta and Fergus were harmless without them, but they were forlorn, being so much used to having their sports led by their two seniors that they hardly knew what to do without them, and the entreaty, or rather the whine, ‘I want something to do,’ was heard unusually often. This led to Gillian’s being often called off to attend to them during the course of wet days that ensued, and thus Dolores was a good deal alone with her aunt, who was superintending her knitting a pair of silk stockings to send out to her father, it was hoped in time for his next birthday. At the first proposal, Dolores looked dull and unwilling, and at last she squeezed out, ‘I don’t think father will ever want me to do anything for him again.’ ‘My poor child, do you think a father does not forgive and love all the more one who is in deep sorrow for a fault?’ ‘I don’t think my letter seemed sorry! I was not half so sorry then as I am now,’ then at a kind word from her aunt her eyes overflowed, and she said, ‘No, I wasn’t; I didn’t know how good you were, or how bad I was!’ And when Aunt Lily kissed her, she put her arms round the kind neck that bent down to her, and laid her head against it, as if it was quite a rest to feel that love. Her aunt encouraged her to write again to her father, and to try to express something of her grief and entreaty for forgiveness, and she was somewhat cheered after this; as though something of the load on her mind was removed. One day she brought down all the books in her room and said, ‘Please, Aunt Lily, look at them, and let them be with the rest in the schoolroom, I want to be just like the others.’ Lady Merrifield was much pleased with this surrender. Some of the books were really well worth having and reading, indeed, the best of them she knew, but there were eight or ten which she suspected of being what Mysie called silly stories, and she kept them back to look over. She had been trying in this quiet interval to get Dolly to read something besides mere childish stories for recreation; and when she saw how well worn the story books were, and how untouched the ‘easy history,’ and the books about animals and foreign countries were, she saw why so clever a girl as Dolores seemed so stupid about everything she had not learnt as a lesson, and entirely ignorant of English poetry. Lady Merrifield read to her and Gillian in the evenings, and how they did enjoy it, and bemoaned the coming of grandmamma, to spoil their snugness and occupy ‘mamma.’ For Dolores began so to call Lady Merrifield. She had never so termed her own mother, and it seemed to her that with the words ‘Aunt Lily’ she put away all sorts of foolish, sinister feelings.