"I don't know, sir."
"Call me uncle Nathan!"
"Well, I don't know, uncle Nathan," repeated the child, blushing, "but it seems to me as if it must hurt the pretty flowers to be picked, as if they had feeling like us, and would cry out in my fingers."
"That is a queer thought," said uncle Nathan, and he looked curiously on the child.
"Is it? I don't know," was the modest reply, "but I always feel that way about flowers."
"She is a strange little creature," thought uncle Nathan, who had a world of sympathy for every generous emotion the human soul ever knew, "what company she will be here in the old stoop nights like this."
Then in a quiet, gentle way, uncle Nathan began to question the child, as his sister had done; but Mary did not shrink from him as she had from his relative; and the sunset gathered around them, while she was telling her mournful little history.
The old man's eyes filled with tears more than once, as he listened. Mary saw it and drew close to him as she spoke, till her little clasped hands rested on his knees.
Just then aunt Hannah came into the porch with a pail in her hand, foaming over with milk.
"Oh!" exclaimed uncle Nathan, lifting himself from the arm-chair with a heavy sigh, "I oughtn't to have been sitting here, in this way, while you are doing up the chores, Hannah. Give me the stool, little darter, I must do my share of the milking, any how."