And then she loved 'em—she loved her poor old charges with a daughter's love and with all the love a mother gives to a helpless baby, with the pity added that gray hairs and toothless gums must amount to added up over the sum of dimples and ivory and coral that makes up a baby's beautiful helplessness.
And they wuz took from her dretful sudden. There wuz a sort of a influenza prevailin' up round their way, and lots of strong healthy folks suckumbed to it, and it struck onto these poor old feeble ones some like simiters, and mowed 'em right down.
The old lady wuz took down first, and her great anxiety wuz—"That Pa shouldn't know that she wuz so sick."
But before she died, "Pa" in another room wuz took with it, and passed away a day before she did.
She worried all that mornin' about "Pa," and—"How bad he would feel if he knew she wuz so sick!" But along late in the afternoon, when the Winter sun wuz makin' a pale reflection on the wall through the south winder, she looked up, and sez she—
"Why, there stands Pa right by my bed, and he wants me to git up and go with him. And, Isabelle, I must go."
And she did.
"Why, there stands Pa, and he wants me to git up and go with him."
And Isabelle wuz left alone.