"But what?" asked Mrs. Wentworth.
"Mother," exclaimed the child, throwing her arms round her mother's neck, and evading the question, "father will come back to us, and then we will not want bread."
The word "father," brought to Mrs. Wentworth's mind her absent husband. She thought of the agony he would endure if he knew that his wife and children were suffering for food. A swelling of her bosom told of the emotion raging within her, and again the tears started to her eyes.
"Come, my sweet boy," she said, dashing away the tears, as they came like dewdrops from her eyelids, and speaking to the infant on her knee, "it is time to go to bed."
"Aint I to get some bread before I go to bed?" he asked.
"There is none, darling," she answered hastily. "Wait until to-morrow and you will get some."
"But I am so hungry," again repeated the child, and again a pang of wretchedness shot through the mother's breast.
"Never mind," she observed, kissing him fondly, "if you love me, let me put you to bed like a good child."
"I love you!" he said, looking up into her eyes with all that deep love that instinct gives to children.
She undressed and put him to bed, where the little Ella followed him soon after. Mrs. Wentworth sat by the bedside until they had fallen asleep.