"It's as nigh again as going round, ma'am," said Lilac eagerly; "and it's not to say difficult if you do it sideways."

Mrs Leigh still hesitated. It was very steep; the smooth turf was slippery. There was not even a shrub or anything to cling to, and a slip would certainly end in an awkward tumble. At another time she would have turned from it with horror, but she looked at Lilac's upturned anxious face and was touched with pity.

"After all," she said, grasping her umbrella courageously, "if you can help me a little, perhaps it won't be so bad as it looks."

So they started, hand in hand, Lilac a little in front carefully leading the way; but she was soon sorry that they had not gone round by the road. This was a short distance for herself, but it proved a long one now that she had Mrs Leigh with her. A slip, a stop, a slide, another stop--it was a very slow progress indeed. As they went jerking along the flowers fell off Lilac's dress one by one and left a white track behind her. She had taken off her crown and held it in her hand; its blossoms were drooping already, and its leaves folded up and limp. How short a time it was since they had been fresh and fair, and she had marched up the hill so bravely, full of delight. Now, poor little discrowned Queen, she was leaving her kingdom of mirth and laughter behind her with every step, and coming nearer to the shadowy valley where sadness waited. After many a sigh and gasp Mrs Leigh and her guide reached the bottom in safety. They were on comparatively level ground now, with gently sloping fields in front of them and the sharp shoulder of the hill rising at their back. There, within a stone's throw stood the Wishings' cottage, and a little farther on Lilac's own home. How quiet, how very still it all looked! Now and then there floated in the calm air a shout or a sudden burst of laughter from the distant merry-makers, but here, below, it was all utterly silent. The two little white cottages had no light in their windows, no smoke from their chimneys, no sign of life anywhere.

"Mother's let the fire out," said Lilac.

Mrs Leigh came to a sudden standstill. "Lilac," she said, "my poor child--"

Lilac looked up frightened and bewildered. Mrs Leigh's eyes were full of tears, and she could hardly speak. She took Lilac's hand in hers and held it tightly. "My poor child," she repeated.

"Oh, please, ma'am," cried Lilac, "let's be quick and go to Mother.

What ails her?"

"Nothing ails her," said Mrs Leigh solemnly; "nothing will ever ail her any more. You must be brave for her sake, and remember that she loves you still; but you will not hear her speak again on earth."

The revels on the hill broke up sooner than usual that night, and those who had to pa.s.s the cottage on their way home trod softly and hushed their children's laughter. For ill news travels fast, and before nightfall there was no one who did not know that the Widow White was dead.

And thus Lilac's May-Day reign held in its short s.p.a.ce the greatest happiness and the greatest sorrow of her life. Joy and smiles and freshly-blooming flowers in the morning; sadness and tears and a withered crown at night.

CHAPTER SIX.

ALONE.

"The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?"--_Proverbs_.

A few days after this Lilac sat on her little stool in her accustomed corner, listening in a dreamy way to the m.u.f.fled voices of Mrs Pinhorn and Mrs Wishing. They spoke low, not because they did not wish her to hear, but because, having just come from her mother's funeral, they felt it befitted the occasion. As they talked they st.i.tched busily at some "black" which they were helping her to make, only pausing now and then to glance round at her as though she were some strange animal, shake their heads, and sigh heavily. Lilac had not cried much since her mother's death, and was supposed by the neighbours to be taking it wonderful easy-like. For the twentieth time Mrs Wishing was entering slowly and fully into every detail connected with it--of all the doctor had said of its having been caused by heart disease, of all she had said herself, of all Mr Leigh had said; and if she paused a moment Mrs Pinhorn at once asked another question. For it was Mrs Wishing, who, running in as usual to borrow something, had found Mrs White on May morning sitting peacefully in her chair, quite dead.

"And it do strike so mournful," she repeated, "to think of the child junketing up on the hill, and May Queen an' all, an' that poor soul an alone."

"It's a thing one doesn't rightly understand, that is," said Mrs Pinhorn, "why both Lilac's parents should have been took so sudden."

She gave a sharp glance round the room--"I suppose," she added, "the Greenways'll have the sticks. There's a goodish few, and well kep'.

Mary White was always one for storing her things."

"I never heard of no other kin," said Mrs Wishing.

"Lilac's lucky to get a home like Orchards Farm. But there! Some is born lucky."

The conversation continued in the same strain until Mrs Wishing discovered that she must go home and get Dan'l's supper ready.

"An' it's time I was starting too," added Mrs Pinhorn. "I've got a goodish bit to walk."

They both looked hesitatingly at Lilac.

"You'll come alonger me and sleep, won't you, dearie?" said Mrs Wishing coaxingly. "It's lonesome for you here."

But Lilac shook her head. "I'd rather bide here, thank you," was all she said; and after trying many forms of persuasion the two women left her unwillingly and took their way.

Lilac stood at the open door and watched them out of sight, but she was not thinking of them at all, though she still seemed to hear Mrs Wishing's words: "It's lonesome for you here." Her head felt strange and dizzy, almost as though she had been stunned, and it was stranger still to find that she could not cry although Mother was dead. She knew it very well, everyone had talked of it to her. Mr Leigh had spoken very kind, and Mrs Leigh had given her a black frock, and all the neighbours at the church that morning had groaned and cried and pitied her; but Lilac herself had hardly shed a tear, though she felt it was expected of her, and saw that people were surprised to see her so quiet.

She tried every now and then to get it into her head, and to understand it, but she could not. It seemed to be someone else that folks spoke of, and not Mother. As she stood by the open door, each thing her eye rested on seemed to have something to do with her and to promise her return. There was the hill she had toiled up so often: surely she would come again with a tired footstep, but always a smile for Lilac. There was the little garden and the sweet-peas she had sown, just showing green above the earth: would she never see them bloom? There on the window sill were her knitting-pins and a half-finished stocking: was it possible that Lilac would never hear them click again in her busy fingers? There, most familiar object of all, was the clothes line.

Lilac could almost fancy she saw her mother's straight active figure, as she had done scores of times, stretching up her arms to fasten the clothes with wooden pegs, her skirt tucked up, her arms bare, her sunbonnet tilted over her eyes. No--it was quite impossible to feel that she would really never come back; it seemed much more likely that by and by she would walk in at the door and sit down by the window in her high-backed Windsor chair, and take up the unfinished knitting. As Lilac was thinking thus, a figure did really appear at the top of the hill, a short square figure with a gaily trimmed hat on its head--her cousin Agnetta.

For the first time in all her life Agnetta was feeling not superior to Lilac as usual, but shy of her. She did not know what to say to her nor even whether she should be welcome, for she was conscious of having been very ill-tempered lately. Now that Lilac was in trouble, cast down from her high position as Queen, she no longer felt angry with her, and would even have liked to make herself pleasant--if she could. As she came near, however, and stood staring at her cousin, she felt that somehow there was a great difference in her, something which she could not understand. There was a look in Lilac's small white face which made it impossible to speak to her in the old patronising tone; it was as though she had been somewhere and seen something to which Agnetta was a stranger, and which could never be explained to her. It made her uncomfortable, and almost afraid to say anything; and yet, she remembered, Lilac was very low down in the world now--there was less reason than ever to stand in awe of her. She was only poor little Lilac White, with nothing in the world she could call her own, an orphan, and dependent for a home on Agnetta's father. So after these reflections she took courage and spoke: "Mamma said I was to tell you that she'll be up to-morrow morning to look at the furniture, and you must be ready in the afternoon to come down alonger Ben when he brings the cart."

Lilac nodded, and the two girls stood silently on the doorstep for a moment; then Agnetta spoke again:

"I s'pose you're glad you're coming to live at the farm, ain't ye?"

"No," answered Lilac, "I don't know as I be. I'd rather bide here."

Agnetta had recovered her courage with her voice. She stepped uninvited past Lilac into the room and cast a curious look round.

"Lor'!" she said, "don't it look mournful! I should think you'd be glad to get away."

Lilac did not answer.

"What's this?" asked Agnetta, pouncing on the needlework which the two women had left on the table.

"It's a frock for me," said Lilac. "Mrs Leigh give it to me."

Agnetta held the skirt out at arm's length and looked at it critically.

"Well!" she exclaimed with some scorn in her voice, "I should a thought you'd a had it made different now."

"Different?" said Lilac enquiringly.

"Why, there's no reason you shouldn't have it cut more stylish, is there, now there's no one to mind?"

No one to mind! Lilac looked at her cousin with dazed eyes for a moment, as if she hardly understood--then she took the stuff out of her hand.

"I'll never have 'em made different," she cried with a sudden flash in her eyes; "I never, never will." And then to Agnetta's great surprise she suddenly burst into tears.

Agnetta stood staring at her, puzzled. She was sorry, only what had made Lilac cry just now when she had been quite calm hitherto?

"Don't take on so," she ventured to say presently; "and you'll spoil your black. It'll stain dreadful."

But Lilac took no more notice than if she had not been there, and soon, feeling that she could do nothing, Agnetta left her and took her way home. She had accomplished something by her visit, though she did not know it, for she had made Lilac feel now that it really was true.

Mother would not come back. She was alone in the world. There was no one, as Agnetta had said, "to mind."

She began to understand it now, and the clearer it was the harder it was to bear. So she bowed her head on the table, amongst the black stuff in spite of Agnetta's caution, and cried on. And presently another thing, which she had not realised till now, stood out plainly before her. She was to go away to-morrow and live at Orchards Farm. Orchards Farm, which she had always fancied the most beautiful place in the world, and beside which her own home had seemed poor and small! Now all that had changed, and the more she thought of it the more she felt that she did not want to leave the cottage. It had suddenly become dear and precious; for all the things in it, even the meanest and smallest, seemed full of her mother's voice and presence. Orchards Farm was a strange country now, with nothing in it that her mother had loved or that loved her, and to go there would be like going still farther from her. Raising her eyes she looked round at the familiar room, at her mother's chair, at her own little stool, at the plants in the window.

They all seemed to say: "Don't go, Lilac. It is better to stay here."

Must she go? Then suddenly she caught sight of the lilac crown lying dusty and withered in a corner. It reminded her of a friend. "I'll ask Uncle Joshua," she said to herself; "I'll go early to-morrow morning and ask him. _He'll_ know."