So now there was a neat little note inside the muff, and it told Rosie that, when next Christmas came, "Unker Willum would send her three hundred and three thousand and thirty-six cents and make his darling niece 'perfickly happy.'"
Rosie did not clap her hands or laugh at this letter as "Unker Willum" had expected; she only smiled faintly, and by-and-bye began to cry softly to herself. Mamma said,—
"Is it your head, darling?"
"Yes, mamma, my head aches; but that isn't what makes me cry. I was s'posin' would you and Lucy and Bertie be very lonesome 'thout me, if I should go way off up to heaven?"
"Don't talk so, my precious child," said Mrs. Abbott. "God doesn't want you to die; He wants you to live to be mamma's dear little comfort."
"Does He?" asked Rosie, opening her sweet, blue eyes, and fixing them on her mother's face. Then she moved her head from side to side on the pillow, and said,—
"No, mamma, I think I'm going up to heaven velly soon."
Mrs. Abbott's heart throbbed with a quick pain at these words; and she began to tell Rosie some stories to take up her mind; such as "Little Bopeep has Lost her Sheep," and "Little Boy Blue, come, Blow your Horn!"
"Mamma," said Rosie, "I'd ravver hear that pretty story 'bout Jesus—it's so much nicer. How he came down here, and put his hands on the little chillens."
Then Mrs. Abbott sang, in a trembling voice,—