– almost as one does on waking from the first real sleep after an illness – that she tried to fancy she was still half-dreaming, and that it could not yet be time to get up. A slight noise – a very slight noise it was – at the side of her bed made her at last, though reluctantly, open her eyes again and turn slightly round. Quick ears and watchful eyes were on the alert —
"Oh, Auntie – Auntie dear – you are awake at last. You have had a nice sleep?"
"Very – a very sweet sleep, my darling," said Auntie, smiling, for the last night's impressions were strong upon her. She was not going to make herself unhappy any more about that which could not be cured.
Molly's bewildered eyes turned towards her sister.
"She looks so happy," she whispered. "Can she know, can she have heard us talking?"
No – she had heard nothing – but something, some indefinable instinct now seemed suddenly to awaken her suspicions.
"Molly – Sylvia!" she exclaimed, starting up. "What is it? What are you saying? It cannot be – " But before she had time to say more she was interrupted.
"Yes, it can be – it is," they called out. And something, a softly shining something, round and smooth, with a smaller shining thing attached to it, dangled above her eyes.
"The watch, Auntie – grandmother dear's own old watch, and the locket! A man – such a nice civil poor man – found them, and has brought them back, while you were still asleep."
"And we could not bear to waken you. You looked so tired and white, and were sleeping so quietly. But it was all right," Molly hastened to assure her. "We lent the money – the fifty francs reward, you know – and he was so pleased, poor man. I am afraid he is very poor."
"He asked for a certificate – a little note to say he had been honest in bringing it back," added Sylvia. "But we thought, and so did he, that it would be better for you to write it. So he is going to call again – to-morrow or the day after in the evening – it is such a long way off where he lives, he says."
"What good will the certificate do him?" asked Auntie, stroking and smoothing her dear watch all the time.
"He said it might get him promoted in the office where he works," said Molly, "And he says the watch is a very good one – he took it to a friend of his who is a jeweller. So you see, Auntie, though he couldn't have sold it here – you remember they told us it was impossible to sell jewellery that isn't one's own here, as one has to tell all about where one got it and all that – he might have kept it for himself."
"Or sent it away to be sold somewhere else," said Sylvia.
"Oh yes, no doubt he could have done something with it, if he hadn't been really honest."
"And yet so poor," said Auntie thoughtfully. Then she looked again at the watch with such a loving gaze that it brought tears to the girls' eyes.
"Oh, Auntie darling, how nice it is to see you looking like yourself again," said Molly. "It seems almost, doesn't it," she added in a lower voice, "as if its coming back were a little message from grandmother?"
How different appeared everything that happy day! How bright the sunshine, even though but some pale wintry beams struggling through the cold gray sky; how nice everything they had to eat seemed – was it, perhaps, that the kind-hearted cook in her sympathy took unusual pains? – how Auntie smiled, nay, laughed right out, when Molly suddenly checked herself in saying something about what o'clock it was, forgetting that it was no longer a painful subject! How grateful they all felt to be able to go to bed in peace without the one ever-recurring, haunting thought, "If the watch could but be found!"
And with the night came another thought to Auntie.
"Sylvia and Molly," she said the next morning, "I have been thinking so about those poor people – the man who found the watch I mean – and his family," for he had told them he was married and had children. "I do feel so grateful to him. I feel that I must go and see for myself if they are so very poor. You have the exact address?"
"Oh yes," Molly replied, "we wrote it down. But oh, Auntie dear, you will let us go with you."
Auntie hesitated a little, but yielded in the end.
"You will promise to let me go in first," she said, "just to see that it is quite respectable, and no infectious illness or anything that could hurt you."
Bernard hardly knew his little wife again when he got home that evening. The fifty francs had greatly cheered her the night before, but their influence could not explain the state of delight between tears and laughter in which he found her this time.
"Oh, my friend – oh, Bernard," she exclaimed, "what a happy thing it was for us that you found the watch's owner and took it at once! They have been here; only fancy such distinguished ladies coming themselves so far just to see if they could be of any service to us in return for ours to them. That was how they put it – was it not touching? The old lady" – poor Auntie, I don't think she would quite have liked that! – "to whom belongs the watch, so good and kind, oh, so kind; and the younger ones two angels, angels simply, I repeat it, Bernard. And when they heard all – I could hide nothing, they questioned me with such sympathy, about Paul's bronchitis and all – they set to work to consider how best they could help us. The lady gave Paul, into his own little hand, another note of fifty francs. That will clear off everything, and make us quite as well off as before his illness; and besides that, they have a good deal of work they want me to do, that will be well paid, better paid than what I do for the shops. And they will try to recommend me to some of their friends, – what I have always wished for, to work for ladies direct instead of for the shops. Oh, Bernard, it was a happy day for us when you found that old watch!"
There is no need to say that Auntie and her nieces were as good as their word.
"On the whole," said Molly, with her customary philosophy, "it was almost worth while to go through all the unhappiness for the sake of the delight of getting the watch back again, especially as it really has been a good thing for those nice poor people. But, Auntie, you will have all your dresses made with watch-pockets now, won't you?"
"Indeed I will," said Auntie with a smile, "and thank you for your good advice, my Molly. Who would think you had ever been the complacent possessor of six pinless brooches?"
At which Molly and Sylvia both laughed, though Molly blushed a little too.
"I am really careful now, I do think," she said. "You know, dear Auntie," she added in a lower voice, "Sylvia and I, more than ever, now, try to do and be all that she wished, in little as well as in big things. Dear, dear grandmother!"
MY PINK PET
Chapter I
"For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather – ."
It is getting to be "a good while ago" since I was a little girl. Sometimes this comes home to me quite distinctly: I feel that I am really growing an old woman, but at other times I cannot believe it. I have to get up and cross the room and look at myself in the mirror, and see with my own eyes the gray hairs and the wrinkles in order to convince myself that childhood, and maidenhood, and even middle age, are all left far behind. At these times "now" appears the dream, "then" the reality; and, strangely enough, this very feeling, I am told, is one of the signs of real old age,
