"Yes, such as I am, ma'am."
The child again glanced at her person, and then with a look of tearful humility at Mrs. Chester.
Mrs. Chester bent over the drawer she was searching, to conceal her tears; there was something strangely pathetic in the child's looks and words.
"I thought," said the child, lifting her face and pointing to little Isabel, with a look of thrilling admiration, "I thought when I came in here, that Heaven must be full of little children like her."
"And why like her?"
"Because she looks in her sleep like the picture which I have seen of Heaven, where beautiful, curly-headed children just like her, lie dreaming on the clouds."
"Then you think she is like those little angels?" said Mrs. Chester, unable to suppress a feeling of maternal pride, and smiling through her tears as she gazed on her daughter's beauty.
"I never saw an ugly little girl in those pictures in my whole life, and I have looked for one a great many times," said the child, sadly.
"Yes, but these pictures are only according to the artist's fancy—they are not the real Heaven."
"I know; but then those who make these pictures do not so much as fancy a little girl like—like me, among the angels."