"Why, don't you like your mother?" asked Carrie, and Lenora replied:
"Of course I do; but I know what she is and I know she isn't what she sometimes seems. Why, she'd be anything to suit the circumstances. She wanted your father, and she assumed the character most likely to secure him; for, between you and me, he isn't very smart."
"What did she marry him for, then?" asked Carrie.
"Marry him! I hope you don't for a moment suppose she married him!"
"Why, Lenora, ain't they married? I thought they were. Oh, dreadful!" and Carrie started to her feet, while the perspiration stood thickly on her forehead.
Lenora screamed with delight, saying, "You certainly have the softest brain I ever saw. Of course the minister went through with the ceremony; but it was not your father that mother wanted; it was his house—his money—his horses—his servants, and his name. Now, maybe in your simplicity you have thought that mother came here out of kindness to the motherless children; but I tell you she would be better satisfied if neither of you had ever been born. I suppose it is wicked in me to say so, but I think she makes me worse than I would otherwise be; for I am not naturally so bad, and I like people much better than I pretend to. Anyway, I like you, and love little Willie, and always have, since the first time I saw him. Your mother lay in her coffin, and Willie stood by her, caressing her cold cheek, and saying, 'Wake up, mamma, it's Willie; don't you know Willie? I took him in my arms, and vowed to love and shield him from the coming evil; for I knew then, as well as I do now, that what has happened would happen. Mag wasn't there; she didn't see me. If she had, she might have liked me better; now she thinks there is no good in me; and if, when you die, I should feel like shedding tears, and perhaps I shall, it would be just like her to wonder 'what business I had to cry—it was none of my funeral!'"
"You do wrong to talk so, Lenora," said Carrie; "but tell me, did you never have any one to love except Willie?"
"Yes," said Lenora; "when I was a child, a little, innocent child, I had a grandmother—my father's mother—who taught me to pray, and told me of God."
"Where is she now?" asked Carrie.
"In heaven," was the answer. "I know she is there, because when she died there was the same look on her face that there was on your mother's—the same that there will be on yours, when you are dead."