6/18 Madelon made an impatient motion and started up, and would have gone out of the room, but Eugene flung an arm around her and held her firmly. "What is it, poor girl ?" he whispered in her ear. Suddenly she shook convulsively, and would have kept her face firm, but she could not. She put her head on her brother's shoulder, and sobbed and wept as he had never seen her do, even when she was a child, for she had never been one to cry when she was hurt. Eugene sat down in the rocking-chair with his sister on his knee, and smoothed her dark hair as gently as her mother might have done. |