She had done her work. Through her love a man had known and found his manhood—had taken his true place in the world, in genial intercourse, in business power, in Christian benevolence. He has grown in position with the growth of a large city, but he still calls it home where a heart is buried, by the cave in Oconomowoc.
Perchance God told Waify of her mother, or told the mother of her child, for, weeks after her death, Giles Mortimer found upon the grave a touching token of a mother’s love—a wreath of immortelles wrought into the word “Mother.”
THE BLACK AND TAN.
MRS. HENSON sat with her three children at their frugal supper. The house was neat, but very plain, and the dress of the children showed that they were only a trifle above actual want.
James, a boy of ten, sold newspapers and earned a little. Helen, between eight and nine, could help about the house when her mother was absent cleaning or washing, and Mary, seven, was the baby of the household, and the one for whom all the others sacrificed.
“Did you earn much this week, James?” said the mother, who had been a widow for several years. “You know I have been sick, and we can’t meet the rent this month, and we didn’t last month. I don’t know what we shall do,” said Mrs. Henson, in a tone of confidence with James, although she did not expect that her three small children could help her solve the problem. She knew that work alone would solve it, and this she was not always able to obtain, and had been too ill to labor even if the work were before her.
“I tried hard,” said the brown-eyed, slender boy, “but I didn’t sell as many papers as I do sometimes. I ran just as fast, but somehow I didn’t get so many customers, and there weren’t so many extras. You know a lady once in a while slips a nickel into your hand for a paper and won’t wait for change, and that helps a fellow along. But I didn’t have much of that last week. I didn’t spend anything for myself, either.”
“No, you wouldn’t do that. We all save for each other since father died. We shall get over these hard places when you are a little older.”