"You tickle!" said David, and wriggled out of her arms with chuckles of fun. "I'm making you a ring," he said.
She let him push the little grass circlet over her finger, and then closed her hand on it lest it should slip off. "You won't forget me, David, will you?"
"No," he said surprised; "I never forget anything. I remember everything the magician did. An' I remember when I was born."
"Oh, David!"
"I do. I remember my brother's candy horse. My brother—was—was, oh, seven or eight weeks older 'an me. Yes; I'll not forget you; not till I'm old. Not till I'm twenty, maybe. I guess I'll go now. We are going to have Jim Crow for dessert. Mary told me. You're prettier than Mary. Or Dr. Lavendar." This was a very long speech for David, and to make up for it he was silent for several minutes. He took her hand, and twisted the little grass ring round and round on her finger; and then, suddenly, his chin quivered. "I don't like you. You're going away," he said; he stamped his foot and threw himself against her knee in a paroxysm of tears. "I hate you!"
It was so unexpected, and so entirely unlike David, that Helena forgot her own pain in soothing him. And, indeed, when she had said she would send him some candy—"and a false-face?" David blubbered;—"yes, dear precious!" she promised;—he quite cheered up, and dragging at her hand, he went skipping along beside her out to the green gate in the hedge.
"I'll stop at the Rectory in the morning," she said, when she kissed him, bravely, in the twilight; "so I'll see you again, dear."
"'By!" said David. And he had gone.
She stood staring after him, fiercely brushing the tears away, because they dimmed the little joyous figure, trotting into the November dusk.
The morning broke, gray and cloudy. William King had had his early breakfast; of course he had! Rather than fail in a housekeeper's duty, Martha would have sat up all night. When the doctor started for that call out into the country, Helena was just getting into the stage at the Stuffed Animal House. Once, as the coach went jolting down the hill, she lowered the misted window and looked back—then sank into her seat and put her hands over her eyes. Just for a while, there had been a little happiness in that house.