"Well, my child, I think—sometimes I think—that by that time I may be in heaven."
I felt suddenly seized with a sort of shivering. I neither spoke nor cried; at seven years old many a child only imperfectly realizes the full meaning of anything like this. My eyes became misty.
"Don't cry, Charley. All that God does must be for the best, you know: and heaven is a better world than this."
"Oh, mamma, you must get well; you must!" I cried, words and tears bursting forth together. "Won't you come out, and grow strong in the sunshine? See how warm and bright it is! Look at the flowers in the grass!"
"Ay, dear; it is all very bright and warm and beautiful," she said, looking across the garden to the field beyond it. "The grass is growing long, and the buttercups and cowslips and blue-bells are all there. Soon they will be cut down and the field will be bare. Next year the grass and the flowers will spring up again, Charlie: but we, once we are taken, will spring up no more in this world: only in heaven."
"But don't you think you will get well, mamma? Can't you try to?"
"Well, dear—yes, I will try to do so. I have tried. I am trying every day, Charley, for I should not like to go away and leave my little boy."
With a long sigh, that it seemed to me I often heard from her now, she lay for a moment with her head on the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. Then she sat forward again, and took up one of the books.
"I meant to give you a little book to-day, Charley, as well as papa. Look, it is called 'Sintram.' A lady gave it me when I was twelve years old; and I have always liked it. You are too young to understand it yet, but you will do so later."
"Here's some poetry!" I cried, turning the leaves over. The pleasure of the gift had chased away my tears. Young minds are impressionable—and had she not just said she would try to get well?