"It's my mamma when she was a little girl," Elsie said, "and this," drawing the miniature from her bosom, "is my mamma when she was a lady."
Mildred gazed upon it again long and earnestly, thinking as before, that there was abundant excuse for her cousin Horace's passion and his inconsolable grief over his loss.
There were two other portraits in the room, which Elsie said were "Grandpa and Grandma Grayson."
She pointed out, too, her mother's writing-desk and her work-table, a dainty basket upon this last, with its little gold thimble and a bit of embroidery with the needle still sticking in it, just as it had been laid down by the white hands on the morning of the day on which the little one first saw the light.
It was Aunt Chloe, coming in in search of her nursling, who told Mildred this.
But Elsie drew her on through a beautiful dressing-room into a spacious and elegantly furnished bedroom beyond, and Aunt Chloe following, pointed out, with bitter weeping, the pillow on which the dying head had lain, and described the last hours of her idolized young mistress:—her mournful leave-taking of her little babe, and dying injunction to her to bring her up to love the Lord Jesus.
It was all intensely interesting and deeply affecting to Mildred.
"Don't cry, mammy, you dear ole mammy!" said Elsie, pulling her nurse down into a chair, and with her own tiny white handkerchief wiping away her tears, "don't cry, 'cause dear mamma is very happy wis Jesus, and you and Elsie are goin' dere, too, some day. An' den I'll tell my sweet, pretty mamma you did be good to her baby, and took care of her all the time."
At that Aunt Chloe strained the tiny form convulsively to her breast with a fresh burst of sobs, and looking up at Mildred with the great tears rolling down her sable cheeks, faltered out, "O, Miss Milly, dey ain't gwine take my chile 'way and disseparate ole Chloe from de las' ting she got lef' to lub in dis world?"
"O, mammy, no, no! dey shan't, dey shan't!" cried the child, clinging about her neck in almost wild affright. "Elsie won't go! Elsie will always stay wis her dear ole mammy!"