He cried himself to sleep that night, and when he awoke in the morning it was with a dreary feeling that a great deal was gone. He was the only child now, and as he stood by the little open grave where Mildred’s tiny coffin had been lowered, and as he felt the soft, tight clasp of his mother’s hand in his, Arthur felt he would be a loving boy to her.
CHAPTER II.
GOING TO INDIA.
HE home seemed very sad and silent indeed without the little child who had been laid in the low green-covered grave, and a sadness seemed to have fallen upon it. At first Arthur went about the house silently and slowly, and it was some time before his boyish spirits came back to him; but he was only a boy after all, and a very young boy, and by and by, when the green leaves came budding on the trees and the spring voice was waking in the valleys and the fields, when the young lambs answered with their bleating and the young birds sung a chorus of bursting joy, Arthur’s face brightened, and his step was bounding again. And his mother was glad to see him with the weary cloud gone, only her heart ached with a deep throb as she thought of the new care that was hanging over him, and of which he knew nothing as yet.
One day, when Arthur was passing the door of his mother’s morning-room, he heard his father’s voice within, saying, “I think you had better tell him, Louisa.” The door was partly open, and if he listened he would easily be able to hear what they were saying. The temptation was very strong, and Arthur yielded to it. It was very wrong, and he knew it.