"Now, what do you s'pose he's goin' to do for me?" continued Lem. "Somethin' fustrate?"
"I think he is going to try to teach you to do right, and to put you in the way of earning an honest living, Lem. What would you like him to do for you?"
"Well," said Lem, "you give me these clothes, and now I'd just as lieve he'd give me one of his old hats and a red shirt; so I'd be decent-like; and then I'd like him to get me to be an engine driver on one of them railroads. If it wasn't for Dolly I'd like to be sent off on a ship to the place where the tigers and elephants is, so I could hunt 'em. But then she'd be lonesome after me; and if I was engine driver, I could come home every spell and see her. And I'm goin' to fix her a fustrate home, when I get a livin'. But I was thinkin' what will I do with her meantime. Do you think if he spoke a word for her, Porters would let her stay round their place? I guess she wouldn't plague 'em none now; and, when she gets well, she could do errands and such like for them."
Mrs. Bradford thought this a fitting time to tell Lem what he must know sooner or later.
"Dolly is going to a better home than any that you or we can give her, Lem," she said, gently. "She is going to that home which Jesus has made ready for her,—His own bright, glorious heaven, where she will never be tired or sick or hungry any more."
Lem stopped short in the path, and turned to the lady.
"She aint, I tell you," he said, fiercely. "You mean she's a goin' to be an angel,—what she's always talking about nowadays,—and she'll have to die for that,—he said so,—and she aint agoin' to. She's better now, I know; for she don't screech out with the pain like she used to."
"No," said Mrs. Bradford, standing still beside him, as he looked down the path after Dolly and her bearers, "she does not suffer as she did; but she is more ill and grows weaker every day. She cannot live many days, Lem; and she knows that she is going to Jesus, and wanted that you should be told."
Lem set down the flower-pots, and dug his knuckles into his eyes.
"She shan't neither," he exclaimed. "I'm goin' to ask him to make her well. He can do it, I know; and, if he will, I won't ask him for nothin' else along of the good turn I done him, gettin' up the lady."