Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/214

198 live to be old and sick, you won’t know what it is to be neglected. Where’s Fritz now? I have n’t seen him here since the day you went to Marblehead.”

“He has n’t been here since then,” replied Amy, as she pulled down the blind, straightened the pillows,  and took a pitcher from the table to replenish with cold  water.

“Well, it was always pleasant to have him running in and out,” said cousin Joan. “I never did think much of a house without a boy in it. He read to me that day you were at Marblehead, and I enjoyed it very  much. It is n’t often that I have the chance to hear good reading.”

Amy did not say anything. Yet it was hard for her not to make a reply. Cousin Joan spoke as if it was a great rarity for her to have any one read to her. But Amy felt as if she herself had spent almost weeks of her  life reading to the old lady, and it was n’t altogether  agreeable to find that her efforts had not been really  appreciated.

Cousin Joan, pleased to have some one to talk to, for she had been alone all the morning, continued in  a rather complaining tone,—

“I suppose it’s all come from your getting so intimate with those summer people. But no good will come from that. Their life is very different from yours, and you ’ll find it out soon enough. You ’ll have nothing left to show for it all but a lot of discontent.”

“I ’ve never been perfectly and absolutely contented,”