DEATH,—THEN LIFE.
RS. Nelson will be willing to let Martha go to a good home for her board and clothing until she learns enough to be entitled to wages, Ruth," Agnes joyfully announced. After a little consultation as to whether their old dresses could be cut down for her, and some misgiving on the part of Ruth as to the training of such a mere child, when neither of them could devote much time to her, they concluded to make the trial.
"If she's worth anything she will be worth a great deal to me just now, for it will enable me to do what I have long been planning, without seeing any way to accomplish it," thought Ruth.
Martha, poor child, in her great joy at the thought of living with "Miss Agnes," seemed to have forgotten the painful circumstance which compelled her to leave home. But on the day that her mother finished patching her few clothes, tying them up and telling her she might go at once to her new home, there came sad tidings from the hospital. They need never hope to have the husband and father home again, unless to take one last look before they buried him out of sight.
"Let me stay with you, mother; Miss Agnes will not be angry, and you will be so lonely," plead the child, forgetting everything else in the one great thought of her mother's approaching widowhood.
"Yes, I will be lonely," wailed the mother. "God only knows the loneliness and heart-ache that is in store for me. But we'll not shed tears now, child, there'll be time enough by and by. We must away to to see him; he'll have a word to say to us I'm thinking."
She meant to be brave, and to keep back the tears until "by and by," but the thought of hearing the last words, perhaps, or what was worse, finding him unable to speak to her, completely unnerved her, and the strength she had all along tried to keep for her children's sake, failed her. In the midst of this scene, while Martha stood beside her mother, wringing her hands and beseeching her not to groan so, Agnes stepped in, having had but one session of school.
"What is it?" she enquired, alarmed. "Your father is not dead, Martha?"
"I don't know, they sent word that he was dying, and we are going to him. Won't you go, Miss Agnes? I am afraid," and the child shuddered as she spoke.