By and by she comes to herself and opens her eyes. She sees the little supper table. She looks at Phil, and then she puts her hand over his mouth, and says, "Not yet, not yet."
Phil's kind heart is wrung with pity. He knows they will soon bring in Tom's dead body. He loved Tom. Everybody loved him. It was only that very morning that he left home so bright, so full of life. Poor Tom!
Dear children, you can imagine how poor Betsey hung, weeping, over her husband's dead body; how dreadful it was to see the earth close over it, and to leave her dear little happy home, and go out among strangers, with such a sorrowful heart, to earn her bread.
She heard that Minnie's mother wanted a cook; she called and Minnie's mother engaged her; and now, perhaps, you'd like to hear the end of the trick the two little girls were planning to play on poor, heart-broken Betsey. You know now why she started whenever a bell rang, and why her nerves were in such a state.
"Now is the time," said Minnie; "Betsey has just gone in after the tea-waiter. Quick! get behind the coat, Louise."
Betsey soon came out with the tea-tray of dishes, and Minnie and Louise jumped at her, from behind the coats, seizing rudely hold of her arm.
Betsey uttered a loud scream, and fell to the bottom of the stairs, with the tray of dishes; while Minnie and Louise, terrified at the broken dishes, ran off up chamber, to hide under the bed.
Minnie's mother had not gone out, as she supposed, and was the first to find Betsey, whose face was badly cut with the broken dishes, and who was taken up quite senseless.
The doctor came and bandaged Betsey's head, and said she might die. Their mother nursed her through a brain fever, and in her delirium, Betsey raved about her husband, and told, in fragments, all that her poor heart had suffered.
Minnie's mother, without saying a word to her little girls about their naughtiness, led them into the room and let them hear poor Betsey call for "Tom—dear Tom," to come and "pity and love her, and take the dull, weary pain out of her heart." And then they wept, and wanted to do something for Betsey, if it were only to bring her a glass of water to moisten her lips. After a long time, when their kind mother got nearly worn out with watching and nursing, Betsey got better. When she had quite recovered, their mother took her for a sempstress, and gave her a nice little comfortable room up stairs, with a fire in it, all to herself; and Minnie and Louise used to sit and read to her, and tell her over and over again, with their arms around her neck, how sorry they were they had been so wicked, and gave her nice books to read evenings, and tried to make poor Betsey's lonely life as happy as ever they could.