Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/351

 awakened with fever gone and the eruption fast coming out. She had asked nothing and they had said nothing.

“When you are better we will tell you all,” he said, smiling down at her. There was something very sorrowful in the smile—and yet something very sweet.

“He is smiling with his eyes as well as his mouth now,” thought Emily.

“How—how did she know?” whispered Laura Murray to him when he went down. “I—can’t understand it, Allan.”

“Nor I. These things are beyond us, Laura,” he answered gravely. “I only know this child has given Beatrice back to me, stainless and beloved. It can be explained rationally enough perhaps. Emily has evidently been told about Beatrice and worried over it—her repeated ‘she couldn’t have done it’ shows that. And the tales of the old Lee well naturally made a deep impression on the mind of a sensitive child keenly alive to dramatic values. In her delirium she mixed this all up with the well-known fact of Jimmy’s tumble into the New Moon well—and the rest was coincidence. I would have explained it all so myself once—but now—now, Laura, I only say humbly, ‘A little child shall lead them.’”

“Our stepmother’s mother was a Highland Scotchwoman. They said she had the second sight,” said Elizabeth. “I never believed in it—before.”

The excitement of Blair Water had died away before Emily was deemed strong enough to hear the story. That which had been found in the old Lee well had been buried in the Mitchell plot at Shrewsbury and a white marble shaft, “Sacred to the memory of Beatrice Burnley, beloved wife of Allan Burnley,” had been erected. The sensation caused by Dr. Burnley’s presence every Sunday in the old Burnley pew had died away. On the first evening that Emily was allowed to sit up Aunt