"Had she only her little pink dressing-gown on?" I asked next.
"Wouldn't she be cold? Mamma, dear, is it a long way off?"
"Not to _her_," she said. She was crying now.
"Do you think if I set off now, this very minute, I could get up to
her?"
But when I said that, mamma clasped me tight.
"Not that too," she whispered. "Meg, Meg, don't say that."
I was sorry for her crying, and I stroked her cheek, but still I wanted
to go.
"Heaven is such a nice place, mamma. Winny said so, only she wondered
about the primroses. Why won't you let me go, mamma?" And just then my
eyes happened to fall on the little piece of black sticking-plaster that
Winny had put on my thumb only two evenings before, when she had hurt it
without meaning. "Mamma, mamma," I cried, "I _can't_ stay here without
Winny."
It all seemed to come into my mind then what it would really be to be
without her, and I cried and cried till my face _ached_ with crying. I
can't remember much of that day, nor of several days. I did not get
ill, the fever did not come to me somehow, but I seemed to get _stupid_
with missing Winny. Mamma and my aunties talked to me, but it did not
do any good. They could not tell me the only things I cared to hear--
all about Winny, what she was doing, what lessons she would have, if she
would always wear white frocks, and all sorts of things, that I must
have sadly pained them by asking. For I did not then at all understand
about death. I thought that Winny, my pretty Winny, just as I had known
her, had gone to Heaven. I did not know that her dear little body had
been laid to rest in the quiet churchyard, and that it was her _spirit_,
her pure happy spirit, that had gone to heaven. It was not for a long
time after that, that I was old enough to understand at all, and even
now it is hard to understand. Mamma says even quite big, and very, very
clever people find it hard, and that the best way is to trust to God to
explain it afterwards. But still I like to think about it, and I like
to think of what my aunties told me of the days Winny was ill--how happy
and patient she was, how _she_ seemed to "understand" about going, and
how she loved to have fresh wreaths of primroses about her all the time
she was ill.
I am a big girl now--nearly twelve. I am a good deal bigger than Winny
was when she died, even Blanche is now as big as she was--is that not
strange to think of? Perhaps I may live to be quite, quite an old
woman--that seems stranger still. But even if I do I shall never forget
Winny. I shall know her dear face again, and she will know mine--I feel
sure she will, in that happy country where she has gone. But I will
never again say "good night" to my Winny, for in that country "there is
no night--neither sorrow nor weeping."