A gush of tears was grandma’s only answer, and after I got well, I found the bonnet carefully rolled up in a sheet of clean white paper and laid away in Sally’s drawer. There were days and nights of entire unconsciousness, and then with the vague, misty feeling of one awakening from a long, disturbed sleep, I awoke again to life and reason. The windows of my room were closed; but without, I heard the patter of the September rain, and the sound of the autumnal wind as it swept past the house. Gathered at my side were my father, mother, brothers, sisters, grandmother; and all, as my eye rested upon their faces, I thought, were paler and more careworn than when I last looked upon them. Something, too, in their dress disturbed me; but, before I could speak, a voice which I knew to be Dr. Griffin’s, said “She is better—she will live.”

From my mother’s lips there broke another cry—not like that which I had heard when they told her I must die—but a cry of joy, and then she fell fainting in my father’s arms. I never doubted her love for me again, but in bitterness of spirit, I have many a time wept that I ever distrusted her, my blessed mother.

The fourth day after the crisis I was alone with Lizzie, whom, for a long time, I importuned to give me a mirror that I might see myself once more. Yielding at length to my entreaties, she handed me a small looking glass, a wedding gift to my grandmother, and with the consoling remark, that “I wouldn’t always look so,” awaited the result. I am older than I was then, but even now I cannot repress a smile as I bring before my mind the shorn head, the wasted face with high cheek-bones, and the big blue eyes, in which there was a look of “crazy Sal,” which met my view. With the angry exclamation, “They’ll hate me worse than ever, I’m so ugly,” I dashed the mirror upon the floor, breaking it in a thousand pieces. Lizzie knew what I meant, and twining her arms about my neck, she said, “Don’t talk so, Rosa; we love you dearly, and it almost killed us when we thought you couldn’t live. You know big men never cry, and pa the least of all. Why, he didn’t shed a tear when lit”——

Here she stopped suddenly, as if on a forbidden subject, but soon resuming the conversation, she continued, “But the day Dr. Lamb was here and told us you would die, he was out under the cherry tree by our play-house, and when Carrie asked him if you’d never play there any more, he didn’t answer, but turned his face towards the barn, and cried so hard and so loud, that grandma came out and pitied him, smoothing his hair just like he was a little boy. Brother Charlie, too, lay right down in the grass, and said he’d give everything he’d got if he’d never called you ‘bung-eyed,’ nor made fun of you, for he loved you best of all. Then there was poor Jamie kept calling for ‘Yosa’”——

Here Lizzie broke down entirely, saying, “I can’t tell you any more, don’t ask me.”

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had neither seen nor heard little Jamie, the youngest of us all, the pet and darling of our household. Rapidly my thoughts traversed the past, and in a moment I saw it all. “Jamie was dead.” I did not need that Lizzie should tell me so. I knew it was true, and when the first great shock was over, I questioned her of his death, how and when it occurred. It seems that I was at first taken with scarlet fever, which soon assumed another form, but not until it had communicated itself to Jamie, who, after a few days’ suffering, had died. I had ever been his favorite, and to the last he had called for me to come; my grandmother, with the superstition natural to her age, construing it into an omen that I was soon to follow him.

Desolate and dreary seemed the house; and when I was able to go from room to room, oh! how my heart ached as I missed the prattle of our baby-boy. Away to the garret, where no one could see it, they had carried his empty cradle, but I sought it out; and as I thought of the soft, brown curls I had so often seen resting there, and would never see again, I sat down by its side and wept most bitterly. The withered, yellow leaves of autumn were falling upon his grave ere I was able to visit it, and at its head stood a simple stone, on which was inscribed, “Our Jamie.” As I leaned against the cold marble, and in fancy saw by its side—what had well-nigh been—another mound, and another stone, bearing upon it the name of “Rosa,” I involuntarily shuddered; while from my heart there went up a silent thanksgiving, that God, in his wise Providence, had ordered it otherwise.

From that sickness I date a more healthful state of mind and feeling, and though I still shrunk from any allusion to my personal appearance, I never again doubted the love of those who had manifested so much solicitude for me when ill, and who watched over me so tenderly during the period of my convalescence, which was long and wearisome, for the snows of an early winter lay upon the frozen ground, ere I was well enough to take my accustomed place in the old brown schoolhouse at the foot of the long hill.

CHAPTER II.
THANKSGIVING.

Thanksgiving! How many reminiscences of the olden time does that word call up, when sons and daughters, they who had wandered far and wide, whose locks, once brown and shining with the sunlight of youth, now give tokens that the autumnal frosts of life are falling slowly upon them, return once more to the old hearth-stone, and, for a brief space, grow young again amid the festive scenes of Thanksgiving Day. To you, who, like me, drew your first breath among the New England hills, and who have strayed away from your early home, in the busy world in which you are now mingling, comes there not occasionally pleasant memories of the olden time, when with eager haste you hied you back to the roof-tree which sheltered your infancy? And though, perchance, the snows of many a winter may have drifted across the graves of the gray-haired man you called your father, and the mild-eyed woman who bore the blessed name of mother, can you not recall them to mind, as when with tears of joy and words of love, they welcomed their children home, thanking God that as yet not one of their household treasures was missing? And if, after the lapse of years, there came a time when the youngest of you all was gone, when the childish prattle you loved so well to hear was hushed, when through the house was no more heard the patter of little, busy feet, when there was naught left of the lost one, save a curl of golden hair, or a tiny shoe, soiled and bent, but looking still so much like him who wore it once, that you preserve it as your choicest treasure: if, I say, there came to you a time like this, do you not remember how, amid all the social cheer, there was still an aching void, which nothing around you could fill?