CHAPTER I

Philip Ogilvie and his pretty wife were quarrelling, as their custom was, in the drawing-room of the great house in Belgrave Square, but the Angel in the nursery upstairs knew nothing at all about that. She was eight years old, and was, at that critical moment when her father and mother were having words which might embitter all their lives, and perhaps sever them for ever, unconsciously and happily decorating herself before the nursery looking-glass.

The occasion was an important one, and the Angel’s rosebud lips were pursed up in her anxiety, and her dark, pretty brows were somewhat raised, and her very blue eyes were fixed on her own charming little reflection.

“Shall it be buttercups, or daisies, or both?” thought the Angel to herself.

A box of wild flowers, which had come up from the country that day, lay handy. There were violets and primroses, and quantities of buttercups and daisies, amongst these treasures.

“Mother likes me when I am pretty, father likes me anyhow,” she thought, and then she stood and contemplated herself, and pensively took up a bunch of daisies and held them against her small, slightly flushed cheek, and then tried the effect of the buttercups in her golden brown hair. By-and-by, she skipped away from the looking-glass, and ran up to a tall, somewhat austere lady, who was seated at a round table, writing busily.

“What do you want, Sibyl? Don’t disturb me now,” said this individual.

“It is only just for a moment,” replied the Angel, knitting her brows, and standing in such a position that she excluded all light from falling on the severe-looking lady’s writing-pad.

“Which is the prettiest, buttercups or daisies, or the two twisted up together?” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry me, child, I want to catch this post. My brother is very ill, and he’ll be so annoyed if he doesn’t hear from me. Did you say buttercups and daisies mixed? Yes, of course, mix them, that is the old nursery rhyme.”

The little Sibyl stamped a small foot encased in a red shoe with an impatient movement, and turned once more to contemplate herself in the glass. Miss Winstead, the governess, resumed her letter, and a clock on the mantelpiece struck out seven silvery chimes.

“They’ll be going in to dinner; I must be very quick indeed,” thought the child. She began to pull out the flowers, to arrange them in little groups, and presently, by the aid of numerous pins, to deck her small person.

“Mother likes me when I am pretty,” she repeated softly under her breath, “but father likes me anyhow.” She thought over this somewhat curious problem. Why should father like her anyhow? Why should mother only kiss her and pet her when she was downright pretty?

“Do I look pretty?” she said at last, dancing back to the governess’s side.

Miss Winstead dropped her pen and looked up at the radiant little figure. She had contrived to tie some of the wild flowers together, and had encircled them round her white forehead, and mixed them in her flowing locks, and here, there, and everywhere on her white dress were bunches of buttercups and daisies, with a few violets thrown in.

“Do I look pretty?” repeated Sibyl Ogilvie.

“You are a very vain little girl,” said Miss Winstead. “I won’t tell you whether you look pretty or not, you ought not to think of your looks. God does not like people who think whether they are pretty or not. He likes humble-minded little girls. Now don’t interrupt me any more.”

“There’s the gong, I’m off,” cried Sibyl. She kissed her hand to Miss Winstead, her face all alight with happiness.

“I know I am pretty, she always talks like that when I am,” thought the child, who had a very keen insight into character. “Mother will kiss me to-night, I am so glad. I wonder if Jesus Christ thinks me pretty, too.”

Sibyl Ogilvie, aged eight, had a theology of her own. It was extremely simple, and had no perplexing elements about it. There were three persons who were absolutely perfect. Jesus Christ Who lived in heaven, but Who saw everything that took place on earth, and her own father and mother. No one else was absolutely without sin, but these three were. It was a most comfortable doctrine, and it sustained her little heart through some perplexing passages in her small life. She used to shut her eyes when her mother frowned, and say softly under her breath —

“It’s not wrong, ’cos it’s mother. Mother couldn’t do nothing wrong, no more than Jesus could”; and she used to stop her ears when her mother’s voice, sharp and passionate, rang across the room. Something was trying mother dreadfully, but mother had a right to be angry; she was not sinful, like nurse, when she got into her tantrums. As to father, he was never cross. He did look tired and disturbed sometimes. It must be because he was sorry for the rest of the world. Yes, father and mother were perfection. It was a great support to know this. It was a very great honor to have been born their little girl. Every morning when Sibyl knelt to pray, and every evening when she offered up her nightly petitions, she thanked God most earnestly for having given her as parents those two perfect people known to the world as Philip Ogilvie and his wife.

“It was so awfully kind of you, Jesus,” Sibyl would say, “and I must try to grow up as nearly good as I can, because of You and father and mother. I must try not to be cross, and I must try not to be vain, and I must try to love my lessons. I don’t think I am really vain, Jesus. It is just because my mother likes me best when I am pretty that I want to be pretty. It’s for no other reason, really and truly; but I don’t like lessons, particularly spelling lessons. I cannot pretend I do. Can I?”

Jesus never made any audible response to the child’s query, but she often felt a little tug at her heart which caused her to fly to her spelling-book and learn one or two difficult words with frantic zeal.

As she ran downstairs now, she reflected over the problem of her mother’s kisses being softest and her mother’s eyes kindest when her own eyes were bright and her little figure radiant; and she also thought of the other problem, of her grave-eyed father always loving her, no matter whether her frock was torn, her hair untidy, or her little face smudged.

Because of her cherubic face, Sibyl had been called the Angel when quite a baby, and somehow the name stuck to her, particularly on the lips of her father. It is true she had a sparkling face and soft features and blue eyes; but she was, when all is said and done, a somewhat worldly little angel, and had, both in the opinions of Miss Winstead and nurse, as many faults as could well be packed into the breast of one small child. Both admitted that Sibyl had a very loving heart, but she was fearless, headstrong, at times even defiant, and was very naughty and idle over her lessons.

Miss Winstead was fond of taking complaints of Sibyl to Mrs. Ogilvie, and she was fond, also, of hoping against hope that these complaints would lead to satisfactory results; but, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Ogilvie never troubled herself about them. She was the sort of woman who took the lives of others with absolute unconcern; her own life absorbed every thought and every feeling. Anything that added to her own comfort was esteemed; anything that worried her was shut as much as possible out of sight. She was fond of Sibyl in her careless way. There were moments when she was proud of the pretty and attractive child, but she had not the slightest idea of attempting to mould her character, nor of becoming her instructress. One of Mrs. Ogilvie’s favorite theories was that mothers should not educate their children.

“The child should go to the mother for love and petting,” she would say. “Miss Winstead may complain of the darling as much as she pleases, but need not suppose that I shall scold her.”

It was Sibyl’s father, after all, who now and then spoke to her about her unworthy conduct.

“You are called the Angel, and you must try to act up to your name,” he said on one of these occasions, fixing his own dark-grey eyes on the little girl.

“Oh, yes, father,” answered the Angel, “but, you see, I wasn’t born that way, same as you was. It seems a pity, doesn’t it? You’re perfect and I am not. I can’t help the way I was born, can I, father?”

“No; no one is perfect, darling,” replied the father.

“You are,” answered the Angel, and she gave her head a defiant toss. “You and my mother and my beautiful Lord Jesus up in heaven. But I’ll try to please you, father, so don’t knit up your forehead.”

Sibyl as she spoke laid her soft hand on her father’s brow and tried to smooth out some wrinkles.

“Same as if you was an old man,” she said: “but you’re perfect, perfect, and I love you, I love you,” and she encircled his neck with her soft arms and pressed many kisses on his face.

On these occasions Philip Ogilvie felt uncomfortable, for he was a man with many passions and beset with infirmities, and at the time when Sibyl praised him most, when she uttered her charming, confident words, and raised her eyes full of absolute faith to his, he was thinking with a strange acute pain at his heart of a transaction which he might undertake and of a temptation which he knew well was soon to be presented to him.

“I should not like the child to know about it,” was his reflection; “but all the same, if I do it, if I fall, it will be for her sake, for hers alone.”

CHAPTER II

Sibyl skipped down to the drawing-room with her spirits brimful of happiness. She opened the door wide and danced in.

“Here I come,” she cried, “here I come, buttercups and daisies and violets and me.” She looked from one parent to the other, held out her flowing short skirts with each dimpled hand, and danced across the room.

Mrs. Ogilvie had tears in her eyes; she had just come to the sentimental part of her quarrel. At sight of the child she rose hastily, and walked to the window. Philip Ogilvie went down the room, put both his hands around Sibyl’s waist, and lifted her to a level with his shoulders.

“What a fairy-like little girl this is!” he cried.

“You are Spring come to cheer us up.”

“I am glad,” whispered Sibyl; “but let me down, please, father, I want to kiss mother.”

Mr. Ogilvie dropped her to the ground. She ran up to her mother.

“Father says I am Spring, look at me,” she said, and she gazed into the beautiful, somewhat sullen face of her parent.

Mrs. Ogilvie had hoped that Sibyl would not notice her tears, but Sibyl, gentle as she looked, had the eyes of a hawk.

“Something is fretting my ownest mother,” she whispered under her breath, and then she took her mother’s soft hand and covered it with kisses. After kissing it, she patted it, and then she returned to her father’s side.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Ogilvie knew why, but as soon as Sibyl entered the room it seemed ridiculous for them to quarrel. Mrs. Ogilvie turned with an effort, said something kind to her husband, he responded courteously, then the dinner gong sounded, and the three entered the dining-room.

It was one of the customs of the house that Sibyl, when they dined alone, should always sit with her parents during this hour. Mrs. Ogilvie objected to the plan, urging that it was very bad for the child. But Ogilvie thought otherwise, and notwithstanding all the mother’s objections the point was carried. A high chair was placed for Sibyl next her father, and she occupied it evening after evening, nibbling a biscuit from the dessert, and airing her views in a complacent way on every possible subject under the sun.

“I call Miss Winstead crosspatch now,” she said on this occasion. “She is more cranky than you think. She is, really, truly, father.”

“You must not talk against your governess, Sibyl,” said her mother from the other end of the table.

“Oh, let her speak out to us, my dear,” said the father. “What was Miss Winstead cross about to-day, Sibyl?”

“Spelling, as usual,” said Sibyl briefly, “but more special ’cos Lord Jesus made me pretty.”

“Hush!” said the mother again.

Sibyl glanced at her father. There was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes which he could scarcely keep back.

“My dear,” he said, addressing his wife, “do you think Miss Winstead is just the person – ”

“I beg of you, Philip,” interrupted the mother, “not to speak of the child’s teacher before her face. Sibyl, I forbid you to make unkind remarks.”

“It’s ’cos they’re both so perfect,” thought Sibyl, “but it’s hard on me not to be able to ’splain things. If I can’t, what is to be done?”

She munched her biscuit sorrowfully, and looked with steadfast eyes across the room. She supposed she would have to endure Miss Winstead, crosspatch as she was, and she did not enjoy the task which mother and Lord Jesus had set her.

The footman was in the act of helping Mr. Ogilvie to champagne, and Sibyl paused in her thoughts to watch the frothy wine as it filled the glass.

“Is it nice?” she inquired.

“Very nice, Sibyl. Would you like to taste it?”

“No, thank you, father. Nurse says if you drink wine when you’re a little girl, you grow up to be drunk as a hog.”

“My dear Sibyl,” cried the mother, “I really must speak to nurse. What a disgraceful thing to say!”

“Let us turn the subject,” said the father.

Sibyl turned it with a will.

“I ’spect I ought to ’fess to you,” she said. “I was cross myself to-day. Seems to me I’m not getting a bit perfect. I stamped my foot when Miss Winstead made me write all my spelling over again. Father, is it necessary for a little girl to spell long words?”

“You would not like to put wrong spelling into your letters to me, would you?” was the answer.

“I don’t think I’d much care,” said Sibyl, with a smile. “You’d know what I meant, wouldn’t you, whether I spelt the words right or not? All the same,” she added, “I’ll spell right if you wish it – I mean, I’ll try.”

“That’s a good girl. Now tell me what else you did naughty?”

“When Sibyl talks about her sins, would it not be best for her to do so in private?” said the mother again.

“But this is private,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “only her father and mother.”

Mrs. Ogilvie glanced at a footman who stood not far off, and who was in vain endeavoring to suppress a smile.

“I washed my doll’s clothes, although nurse told me not,” continued Sibyl, “and I made a mess in the night nursery. I spilt the water and wetted my pinny, and I would open the window, although it was raining. I ran downstairs, too, and asked Watson to give me a macaroon biscuit. He wasn’t to blame – Watson wasn’t.”

The unfortunate footman whose name was now introduced hastily turned his back, but his ears looked very red as he arranged some glasses on the sideboard.

“Father,” whispered Sibyl, “do you know that Watson has got a sweetheart, and – ”

“Hush! hush!” said Mr. Ogilvie, “go on with your confessions.”