I tried to speak kindly to her, but my sobs choked me. I looked out of the window, but there was no light there. The snow was falling to the ground in dogged, sullen silence, and the wind, as though tired out with long, useless resistance, only moaned fitfully at times, when clamoring vainly for admission at the closed windows.
Was it not well with the soul just gone to rest? Was it not better with her than with us—with me—who must still wander forth again, out into the snow, and the cold, and the night?
"Oh, my chile! my chile!" sobbed the woman, so black of face, but true of heart; "if I could only have died, and gone to heaven, and left you with Massa Harry! Oh, Miss Anne! Miss Anne! what made you take my chile away from me?"
"It is only for a little while that you will be parted from her, Phrony," I said.
"Bress de Lord! Yes, I'll soon be with my little chile again. But she's dead now, and I can't never see her no more. Oh, my chile! my chile!"
I closed the door softly, for I heard the warning cry of the coachman who was to take us to the outgoing train.