"Yes, Amy, I have heard twice from the lady since I saw you; but I thought it best not to come until I had received a definite answer."
"It is very kind of you to come at all, dear Mrs. Elrington. But have you been successful? Is the answer favourable?"
"Yes, Amy. The lady has engaged you, but there are three little girls, not two, as I at first thought; however they are very young, and I hope your trouble will be slight."
Poor Amy! What she had so long sighed and wished for, now seemed in its stern reality the greatest calamity that could have befallen her. She thought of her mother, whose comfort, solace, and companion she was, how lonely she would be; what could or would she do without her? Must she, indeed, leave her and her home where, for the last few months she had been so happy, and live amongst strangers, who cared not for her? Must she leave her birds, her flowers, all the thousand attractions and associations of home? Yes, she must give up all, and only bear them closer in her heart, not see and feel them every day; and as these thoughts crossed her mind, tears she could not keep down welled up into her eyes; they would not be controlled, and looking up and meeting Mrs. Elrington's pitying gaze bent full on her, with a smothered sob she hid her face on her kind friend's shoulder.
Mrs. Elrington suffered her to weep on in silence, and some minutes elapsed ere Amy raised her head, and, smiling through her tears, took Mrs. Elrington's hand and led her to the door of the room she had just quitted and calling her sister, left the friends together.
An hour afterwards, when Amy entered the room, her mother was alone, Mrs. Elrington was gone.
The widow's head rested on her hand, and tears were falling fast upon a small miniature of Amy that her husband had had taken, for he had been proud of his daughter's beauty.
She heard not Amy's light step, and the daughter bent softly over her mother, and pressed her lips gently to her forehead. "My child." "My mother." And they were folded in one long, mournful embrace.
It was the first—the last time Amy ever gave way before her mother; she felt she must have strength for both; and nobly she bore up against her own sorrowful feelings, smothered every rising emotion of her heart, and prayed that her widowed mother might be comforted and supported during her absence, and her own steps guided aright in the new path which lay so gloomily before her.