She feels one side of a question so deeply, that there is no room left in her nature for considering even the possibility of there being another side at all. And, in that hour of mortal sorrow, Heather had no leisure to bestow a thought on any one except her dead child. Even her love for Arthur seemed blotted out in indignation at his neglect of their first-born.
And yet the iron had entered very deep into the man’s soul—so deep, that the day when he followed Lally to her last resting-place was perhaps the bitterest of his life.
They buried her at Fifield. Not so very far from the old home—under the shadow of the grey church-tower—they laid Heather’s darling down to sleep.
“Lilian, aged six years and four months”—that was the legend her little coffin bore. “Lilian!” No fear of offending the unities now, she was gone where names do not convey much meaning.
“Six years and four months!” She was gone, also, where age and time are not of much account either.
Poor Lally—nay, happy Lally—to have had a life at once so bright and so short, so brimful of everything which can be packed by possibility into the longest span of human existence.
Sunshine and mirth, and love and friendship, and care and devotion.
What—though “finis” was written to the earthly story after a few short chapters—say, friends, was the story less round and perfect in its symmetry for that?
Was the ending in Fifield churchyard all sorrow? Nay, rather there came a time when Heather was able to think, almost with thankfulness, of that child face which should never grow old, nor changed, nor wrinkled, nor careworn, nor other than innocent and pure, waiting for her in that far-off land, where the “ransomed of the Lord shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
All who had been so kind to her in her first illness, came to see the last they could of “poor little Lally Dudley,” together with those who had grown fond of the child towards the end.