Meta turned her face downwards, and held her mother with a frightened movement, her little fingers clasping the thin arms to pain.
“The winter is coming on here, my child, and the trees will soon be bare; the snow will cover the earth, and we must wrap ourselves up from it. But in that other world there will be no winter; no cold to chill us; no summer heat to exhaust us. It will be a pleasant world, Meta; and God will love us.”
Meta was crying silently. “Let me go too, mamma.”
“In a little while, darling. If God calls me first, it is His will,” she continued, the sobs breaking from her aching heart. “I shall ask Him to take care of you after I am gone, and to bring you to me in time; I am asking Him always.”
“Who’ll be my mamma then?” cried Meta, lifting her head in a bustle, as the thought occurred to her.
More pain. Maria choked it down, and stroked the golden curls.
“You will have no mamma, then, in this world. Only papa.”
Meta paused. “Will he take me to London, to Mrs. Pain?”
The startled shock that these simple words brought to Maria cannot well be pictured: her breath stood still, her heart beat wildly. “Why do you ask that?” she said, her tears suddenly dried.
Meta had to collect her childish thoughts to tell why. “When you were in bed ill, and Mrs. Pain wrote me that pretty letter, she said if papa would take me up to London she’d be my mamma for a little while, in place of you.”