"Oh, Arch!" cried the girl, sinking down beside him on the desolate hearth, "it's a hard world to live in! I wonder, if, when folks be dead, they have to sweep crossings, and be kicked and cuffed round by old grandmas when they don't get no pennies? If they don't then I wish I was dead, too, Arch!"
"I suppose it's wicked, Mat. She used to say so. She told me never to get tired of waiting for God's own time—her very words, Mat. Well, now her time has come, and I am all alone—all alone! Oh, mother—mother!" He threw himself down before the dead woman, and his form shook with emotion, but not a tear came to his eyes. Only that hard, stony look of hopeless despair. Mat crept up to him and took his head in her lap, smoothing softly the matted chestnut hair.
"Don't take on so, Arch! don't!" she cried the tears running down over her sunburnt face. "I'll be a mother to ye, Arch! I will indeed! I know I'm a little brat, but I love you, Arch, and some time, when we get bigger, I'll marry you, Arch, and we'll live in the country, where there's birds and flowers, and it's just like the Park all round. Don't feel so—don't!"
Arch pressed the dirty little hands that fluttered about him—for, next to his mother, he loved Mat.
"I will go out now and call somebody," she said; "there Mrs. Hill and Peggy Sullivan, if she ain't drunk. Either of them will come!" And a few moments later the room was filled with the rude neighbors.
They did not think it necessary to call a coroner. She had been ailing for a long time. Heart complaint, the physician said—and she had probably died in one of those spasms to which she was subject. So they robed her for the grave, and when all was done, Arch stole in and laid the pinks and roses on her breast.
"Oh, mother! mother!" he said, bending over her, in agony, "she sent them to you, and you shall have them! I thought they would make you so happy! Well, maybe they will now! Who can tell?"
The funeral was a very poor one. A kind city missionary prayed over the remains, and the hearse was followed to Potter's Field only by Mat and Arch—ragged and tattered, but sincere mourners.
When they came back Mat took Arch's hand and led him into the wretched den she called home.
"You shall stay here, Arch, with Grandma Rugg and me. She said you might if you'd be a good boy, and not plague the cat. Grandma's a rough one, but she ain't kicked me since I tore her cap off. I'm too big to be kicked now. Sit down, Arch; you know you can't stay at home now."