passionately, I had ever been too much wrapped in self to have been very
kind and lovable to her.

"Who will tell me stories now?"

It was a habit of mine to relate stories to her out of my own fertile
imagination. In return for this she kept secret the fact that I sat up
and wrote when I should have been in bed. I was obliged to take some
means of inducing her to keep silence, as she--even Gertie, who firmly
believed in me--on waking once or twice at unearthly hours and discovering
me in pursuit of my nightly task, had been so alarmed for my sanity that
I had the greatest work to prevent her from yelling to father and mother
on the spot. But I bound her to secrecy, and took a strange delight in
bringing to her face with my stories the laughter, the wide-eyed wonder,
or the tears--just as my humour dictated.

"You'll easily get someone else to tell you stories."

"Not like yours. And who will take my part when Horace bullies me?"

I pressed her to me.

"Gertie, Gertie, promise me you will love me a little always, and never,
never forget me. Promise me."

And with a weakly glint of winter sunshine turning her hair to gold, and
with her head on my shoulder, Gertie promised--promised with the soluble
promise of a butterfly-natured child.