I wanted to say that Lady Jane seemed to me a heartless little piece, who cared for nothing in the world but herself, and wasn’t worth grieving for; but I felt there would be no comfort for her in thinking that there had never been any thing worth having in her life. Far better let her go on believing that for six years she had sheltered an angel at her fireside.
At last, when I saw her tears were ceasing to flow, I said, “And when did you see her again?”
“Oh, I have never seen her since that day. I think she pitied me too much to come back and give me the sorrow of parting with her over again. No, I have never seen her, but her mother sent me five hundred pounds.”
“And so she ought,” I said impulsively. “It was little enough for all you had done.”
Surgeon Sally looked at me with wonder, not unmixed with reproach, in her eyes.
“Do you think I wanted _that_?” she asked. “I had had my pay for all I did, ten times over, in just having her here to look at and to love. No; I sent the money back, and I think it must be that my darling understood; for, two months afterwards, I received the only gift I would have cared to have,--her portrait. Will you please to look round, ma’am? It hangs behind you.”
I looked round, and there she was, even lovelier than when I had seen her first,--a bright, smiling creature, silken-clad, patrician to the finger-tips. But it seemed to me that no heart of love looked out of the fair, careless face. I thought I would rather be Surgeon Sally, and know the sweetness of loving another better than myself.
“She is very beautiful,” I said, as I turned away.
“Yes; and sometimes I almost think I feel her lips, her bonny bright lips, touch my face, as they did that last day, and hear her say, ‘Don’t think, Sally, that I’m not sorry.’ Oh, my lot isn’t hard, ma’am. I might have lived my life through and never have known what it was to have something all my own to love. God was good.
“And after all, ma’am,” she added cheerfully, “there’s nothing happier in the world than to give all the pleasure you can to somebody.”
And I went away, feeling that the dwarf surgeon of the dolls’ hospital had learned the true secret of life.
Everybody called her “pretty Miss Kate.” It was an odd title, and she had come by it in an odd way. A sort of half-witted nurse, whose one supreme merit was her faithfulness, had tended Squire Oswald’s baby daughter all through her early years; and she it was who had first called the girl “pretty Miss Kate.”