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It was rather wonderful how a child like little Lucy and Miss Martha lived with so little conversation. Martha talked no more at home than abroad; moreover, at home she had not the attitude of waiting for some one to talk to her, which people outside considered trying. Martha did not expect her cousin to talk to her. She seldom asked a question. She almost never volunteered a perfectly useless observation. She made no remarks upon self-evident topics. If the sun shone, she never mentioned it. If there was a heavy rain, she never mentioned that. Miss Martha suited her cousin exactly, and for that reason, aside from the fact that he had been devoted to little Lucy’s mother, it never occurred to him to marry again. Little Lucy talked no more than Miss Martha, and nobody dreamed that she sometimes wanted somebody to talk to her. Nobody dreamed that the dear little girl, studying her lessons, learning needlework, trying very futilely to play the piano, was lonely; but she was without knowing it herself. Martha was so kind and so still; and her father was so kind and so still, engrossed in his papers or books, often sitting by himself in his own study. Little Lucy in this peace and stillness was not having her share of childhood. When other little girls came to play with her. Miss Martha enjoined quiet, and even Lily Jennings’s bird-like chattering became subdued. It was only at school that Lucy got her chance for the irresponsible delight which was the simple right of her childhood, and there her zeal for her lessons prevented. She was happy at school, however, for there she lived in an atmosphere of demonstrative affection. The teachers were given to seizing her in fond arms and caressing her, and so were her girl companions; while the boys, especially Jim Patterson, looked wistfully on.

Jim Patterson was in love, a charming little poetical boy-love; but it was love. Everything which he did in those days was with the thought of little Lucy for incentive. He stood better in school than he had ever done before, but it was all for the sake of little Lucy. Jim Patterson had one talent, rather rudimentary, still a talent. He could play by ear. His father owned an old violin. He had been inclined to music in early youth, and Jim got permission to practise on it, and he went by himself in the hot attic and practised. Jim’s mother did not care for music, and her son’s preliminary scraping tortured her. Jim tucked the old fiddle under one round boy-cheek and played in the hot attic, with wasps buzzing around him; and he spent his pennies for catgut, and he learned to mend fiddle-strings; and finally came a proud Wednesday afternoon when there were visitors in Madame’s school, and he stood on the platform, with Miss Acton playing an accompaniment on the baby grand piano, and he managed a feeble but true tune on his violin. It was all for little Lucy, but little Lucy cared no more for music than his mother; and while Jim was playing she was rehearsing in the depths of her mind the little poem which later she was to recite; for this adorable little Lucy was, as a matter of course, to figure in the entertainment. It therefore happened that she heard not one note of Jim Patterson’s painfully executed piece, for she was saying to herself in mental singsong a foolish little poem, beginning:

There was one little flower that bloomed
Beside a cottage door.

When she went forward, little darling blue-clad figure, there was a murmur of admiration; and when she made mistakes straight through the poem, saying,

There was a little flower that fell
On my aunt Martha’s floor,

for beginning, there was a roar of tender laughter and a clapping of tender, maternal hands, and everybody wanted to catch hold of little Lucy and kiss her. It was one of the irresistible charms of this child that people loved her the more for her mistakes, and she made many, although she tried so very hard to avoid them. Little Lucy was not in the least brilliant, but she held love like a precious vase, and it gave out perfume better than mere knowledge.