"Yes, I mean to be there in season to get into the parlor if I can."
And now, having reached the corner, where their path diverged, with a mutual "good day" they parted.
CHAPTER IV.
ELLA CAMPBELL.
Scarcely three hours had passed since the dark, moist earth was heaped upon the humble grave of the widow and her son, when again, over the village of Chicopee floated the notes of the tolling bell, and immediately crowds of persons with seemingly eager haste, hurried towards the Campbell mansion, which was soon nearly filled. Among the first arrivals were our acquaintances of the last chapter, who were fortunate enough to secure a position near the drawing-room, which contained the "big looking-glass."
On a marble table in the same room, lay the handsome coffin, and in it slept young Ella. Gracefully her small waxen hands were folded one over the other, while white, half-opened rose buds were wreathed among the curls of her hair, which fell over her neck and shoulders, and covered the purple spots, which the disease had left upon her flesh. "She is too beautiful to die, and the only child too," thought more than one, as they looked first at the sleeping clay and then at the stricken mother, who, draped in deepest black, sobbed convulsively and leaned for support upon the arm of the sofa. What now to her were wealth and station? What did she care for the elegance which had so often excited the envy of her neighbors? That little coffin, which had cost so many dollars and caused so much remark, contained what to her was far dearer than all. And yet she was not one half so desolate as was the orphan Mary, who in Mrs. Bender's kitchen sat weeping over her sister Alice, and striving to form words of prayer which should reach the God of the fatherless.
But few of the villagers thought of her this afternoon. Their sympathies were all with Mrs. Campbell; and when at the close of the services she approached to take a last look of her darling, they closed around her with exclamations of grief and tears of pity, though even then some did not fail to note and afterwards comment upon the great length of her costly veil, and the width of its hem! It was a long procession which followed Ella Campbell to the grave, and with bowed heads and hats uplifted, the spectators stood by while the coffin was lowered to the earth; and then, as the Campbell carriage drove slowly away, they dispersed to their homes, speaking, it may be, more tenderly to their own little ones, and shuddering to think how easily it might have been themselves who were bereaved.
Dark and dreary was the house to which Mrs. Campbell returned. On the stairs there was no patter of childish feet. In the halls there was no sound of a merry voice, and on her bosom rested no little golden head, for the weeping mother was childless. Close the shutters and drop the rich damask curtains, so that no ray of sunlight, or fragrance of summer flowers may find entrance there to mock her grief. In all Chicopee was there a heart so crushed and bleeding as hers? Yes, on the grass-plat at the foot of Mrs. Bender's garden an orphan girl was pouring out her sorrow in tears which almost blistered her eyelids as they fell.
Alice at last was sleeping, and Mary had come out to weep alone where there were none to see or hear. For her the future was dark and cheerless as midnight. No friends, no money, and no home, except the poor-house, from which young as she was, she instinctively shrank.
"My mother, oh, my mother," she cried, as she stretched her hands towards the clear blue sky, now that mother's home, "Why didn't I die too?"