“Mamma, mamma!” he cried, leaping forward, his white arms extended, and the tears sparkling joyfully in his eyes, “you are not angry, you love me, darling mamma?”
“Love you?” cried the widow, raining kisses upon his face. “Love you, darling. I love everything under the heavens, this day, and you, little one, best of all.”
Don’t believe that, little Eddie. The warm blushes on her face, as she buries it in your curls, contradict every word of it. She loves you a great deal more than she did before, certainly; but her heart has grown large and rich since yesterday; and with all these caresses you are not the first there. Content yourself about that, little Eddie.
In her walk that day, Mrs. Oakley met Catharine, who was rambling sadly through the grounds, which we have said adjoined each other, with Elsie Ford. The two women were very melancholy, and a look of continued pain lay upon them both. No wonder their lives were so sombre, so completely cast upon the shadowy side of existence. Elsie was very quiet, and her large black eyes wandered toward the little boy with sorrowful intensity; but she seemed afraid to touch him, muttering that he too would fly away and become nothing if she did.
The boy looked at her wistfully, and once attempted to approach her, for those troubled eyes fascinated him. She waved him back, and gathering an over-ripe thistle, that grew in her path, the ghost of a flower that had been, she cast a sigh into its shadowy heart, and, lo! the whole disappeared. A few silvery gleams floated off toward sunset, and she held nothing but a dead, thorny stalk in her hand.
“See, see; don’t come this way; everything I touch melts like that, into nothing, nothing, nothing.”
The boy looked on and listened. Her voice was so sadly musical, it charmed him. He was very fearless, too, and moved toward her.
She stepped backward, repelling him with her outstretched palms.
“Don’t, don’t, you are so pretty. I won’t hurt you. Go away, or it will come to this.”
She held up the dry, thorny stem of the thistle, and shook it warningly at the child. Repelled by this, he went away, following Mrs. Oakley and Catharine, who had walked forward, keeping the demented woman in sight.