"O Sara! is it all true? Is he really dead and buried? Couldn't he cure himself?"
She subdued her own emotion--it was only in accordance with the line she had laid down for herself. She kissed the boy in the face of the sea of eyes peering through the rails, and held him near as they advanced to the house. Leo, less daring than Dick, had gone round by the gate, and Sara drew him on her other side as he came running up.
She sat down in the room to which she was shown, holding the sobbing boys to her. As she had said to her aunt, Dick had a tender heart, and his sobs were loud and passionate. Leo cried with him. She waited to let their emotion have vent, holding their hands, bending now and again her face against theirs.
"Couldn't he be cured, Sara?"
"No, dears, he could not be cured. It was God's will to take him."
"Why didn't you have us home? Why didn't you let us say goodbye to him?"
"There was no time. We thought he was getting better, and it was only quite at the very last we knew he was dying. He did not forget you and Leo, Dick. He bade me tell you--they were his own words--that Uncle Richard would have sent for you to take a last farewell, but that death came upon him too suddenly. He bade me tell you that you will meet him in that far-off land where your toils and his will be alike over; and--listen, children!--he charged you to be ever working on for it."
Their sobs came forth again. Leo was the first to speak. "Have you written to Barbadoes to tell papa?"
"Aunt Bettina has. See, dears, here are two silver pencil-cases; they were both your Uncle Richard's. The one has his crest on it; the other his initials, R D. I thought you would like to have some little remembrance of him, and I brought them. Which will you choose, Dick? You are the eldest." Dick took the pencils in his hand and decided on the largest, the one that bore the initials. The stone was a beautiful one, a sapphire.
"Is it real, Sara?"