"It will not make any difference to you, puss," says Mr. Bond, leaning over and stroking the warm fur; "there's milk enough for you and Winnie too, and she'd have done it, I know," pointing upward to the portrait, as if the cat understood it all; then he took his hat and cane in his hand and went down stairs, stopping at his landlady's room to tell her "if a poor little girl with a baby should come to see him, not to send her away, but to let her go to his room and rest."
"Pretty piece of business!" said Mrs. Kinalden, as he left the house; "tisn't any beggars' brats I'll have tracking the dirt up my stair-ways, I'll warrant ye!" and she flourished her soup-ladle as if in defiance of all such encroaches upon her blessed domain.
Mr. Bond didn't hear nor see it, though, for his elastic step was away down the street, and if he had he would have thought it only Mrs. Kinalden's way, and would not have taken offense at it. There was so much that was bright and good in his own heart that he could not feel the ill that was in other people's natures, and his life passed as smoothly as if he were not continually subjected to petty annoyances from those about him who imposed upon his forbearance and amiability.
Earth was beautiful to him, and so was life; there had been but one dark spot in his whole existence, and that was when Betty Lathrop twined her young arms around his great neck and told him she must die.
Her grave was very green, though, and there were roses of his own planting around it, and a pure white lily; and there was a holy light always visible to him just above it, as of an angel with glorious wings hovering. He didn't feel as if she had departed wholly from him because he could not see her bodily presence, for he knew that the love was still with him, and this it was that shed such a halo all about his pathway, and there can not be sadness nor gloom where such a consciousness exists.
There are not many Peter Bonds in the world though!
CHAPTER VIII.
Oh! what a gleesome time Nannie had all the long summer day up so near the blue heavens! There was a rapturous sort of joy in watching the fleecy clouds as they played in the pure ether, and, while baby slept, she would kneel down by the window with her head turned side-way upon her arm, and look into the depths of the sky until she fancied she saw the spirits beyond; and then her little soul would try to dream out the mystery of being and immortality. She didn't think so much of this in the damp dark cellar—every thing there seemed to draw her earthward; but it was exalting, and refining, and purifying, to be up so near the angels, and the change was manifested even in her face, which grew more spiritual, and was really quite winning now.
Her happiness was almost perfect as she contrasted the sad past with the bright present. There was only one thing more to long for, and that was books. She could read very well, but all the literature she possessed was Robinson Crusoe, which one of the ladies at the school had given her, and that she had learned almost by heart, so that she sung page after page to Winnie as she lulled her to sleep, and now she craved something more. She was thinking so earnestly about it that she did not hear Mr. Bond's knock, nor perceive that he had entered the room and seated himself by the other window, until he touched her shoulder with his cane across the table.