“Yes; and as you are English too, I thought mayhap you’d like to help a countrywoman; I am going to see to the babe now,” said Aunt Maggie; “mayhap you’d like to see it too?”
“Aye—aye,” replied the captain.
On they went, to the end of the long street—past grog shops, and pawn shops, and mock-auction shops, and second-hand furniture shops, and rickety old tenement houses, where ragged clothes flapped, and broken windows were stuffed with paper; where dogs barked and parrots screamed—for many of these poor people, who can scarcely keep themselves, keep these pets,—past young girls, homeless and shameless, alas!—past young men, old, not in years, but in sin—past little children, who only knew God’s blessed name to blaspheme it. At last Aunt Maggie turned down an alley, dark, narrow, and dingy, and entering one of the low doors, began to ascend the creaky stairs, that seemed swarming with children, of all sorts and sizes, dwarfed in the cradle by disease and neglect. When Aunt Maggie reached the top flight, she stopped before a door, through which came the faint wailing of a little babe, and the low lullaby of a woman’s voice. Upon the bed, opposite the door, lay the dead woman, with a sheet thrown over her face.
“Would you like to see her?” asked Aunt Maggie, turning to the captain. “’Tis a sweet face.”
“Yes—no,” answered the captain, turning away, and then advancing again toward the bed.
“Mary! Mary!” he cried, as the pale upturned face lay uncovered before him: “my Mary here!” and he threw his arms around the neck of the dead girl, and trembled like the strong tree before the tempest blast.
“His Mary!” murmured Aunt Maggie, taking the motherless babe from the old woman’s arms; “his Mary—then this is his grandchild. Didn’t I say that the Lord would provide for the helpless?”
Yes, “his Mary!” Death hides all faults. We only remember the goodness of those upon whose marble faces our tears fall fast; and so the old captain took his little grandchild to his heart, and Aunt Maggie left her little shop and became its nurse. And not till many years after, when the little babe had grown to be a tall girl, did Aunt Maggie tell her the story that I have been telling you.
A FUNERAL I SAW.
I have been to a funeral to-day. It was in a church;—I had to pass through a garden to reach it;—the warm rain was dropping gently on the shrubs and early flowers, and inside warm tears were falling; for before the chancel lay a coffin, and in it was a fair young wife and mother, pale and sweet as the white flowers that lay upon the coffin-lid. Near it was her husband, and beside him were her aged parents, bowed down with grief that she who they thought would close their fading eyes, should fade first. In a house opposite the church, were the dead mother’s babe, only a few days old, and two other little ones, just old enough to prattle unconsciously as they went from room to room, “Mamma has gone away.” I knew, though they did not, how day after day would pass, and these little girls, who had always seen mamma come back again, after she had “gone away,” would stand at the window, looking this way and that, with their little bright faces, and listening for her light footstep; and my heart ached and my eyes filled as I thought how every day, as they grew older, they would need her care and feel her loss the more; for it is only in part that a father, even the kindest, can fill a watchful mother’s place;—he, whose business must be out of doors and away; how can he know how weary the little feet get wandering up and down, with no mamma’s lap to climb upon; how weary the little hands,—putting down one thing, and taking up another, with no mamma to nod smilingly and say, “I see”—or “it is very pretty, dear;” how homesick the little rifled heart feels, though it scarce knows why; how tasteless the pretty cup of milk mamma used to hold to the rosy lips; how empty parlor and nursery, chamber and hall? How much less gentle is nurse’s touch than hers; how much sooner she wearies of answering little curious questions, and getting bits of string and toys for restless fingers to play with; how much longer seems the time now, before papa comes home to dinner and tea,—poor papa—who, with an iron hand, crushes down his own great sorrow and tries and fails to speak to them in her soft, sweet, winning way; and tries and fails to soothe their little insect griefs, though he would die to save them a heart-pang.