Tales from Dickens

by Hallie Erminie Rives; Charles Dickens

Kit could not speak, but the Stranger did: "You speak of little Nell," he said. "Do you remember, long ago, another child, too, who loved you when you were a child yourself? Say that you had a brother, long forgotten, who now at last came back to you to be what you were then to him. Give me but one word, dear brother, to say you know me, and life will still be precious to us again."

The old man shook his head, for grief had killed all memory. Pushing them aside, he went into the next room, calling little Nell's name softly as he went.

They followed. Kit sobbed as they entered, for there on her bed little Nell lay dead.

Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell! The schoolmaster told them of her last hours. They had read and talked to her a while, and then she had sunk peacefully to sleep. They knew by what she said in her dreams that they were of her wanderings, and of the people who had helped them, for often she whispered, "God bless you." And she spoke once of beautiful music that was in the air.

Opening her eyes at last, she begged that they would kiss her once again. That done, she turned to the old man with a lovely smile on her face—such, he said, as he had never seen—and threw both arms about his neck. They did not know at first that she was dead.

They laid little Nell to rest the next day in the churchyard where she had so often sat. The old man never realized quite what had happened. He thought she would come back to him some day, and that then they would go away together. He used to sit beside her grave and watch for her each afternoon.

One day he did not return at the usual hour and they went to look for him. He was lying dead upon the stone.

They buried him beside the child he had loved, and there in the churchyard where they had often talked together they both lie side by side.

None of those who had known little Nell ever forgot her story. After the death of the old man, his brother, the Stranger who had sought them so long, traveled in the footsteps of the two wanderers to search out and reward all who had been kind to them—Mrs. Jarley of the waxwork, the Punch-and-Judy showmen, he found them all. Even the rough canal boatmen were not forgotten.

Kit's story got abroad and he found himself with hosts of friends, who gave him a good position and secured his mother from want. So that his greatest misfortune turned out, after all, to be his greatest good.