"How do you feel, dear?"
"Why, I feel well," said Nettie. "It has been a good day. The gold is all in the air here—not in the streets." She had half raised herself and was sitting looking out of the window.
"Do you think of that city all the time?" inquired Mrs. Mathieson, half jealously.
"Mother," said Nettie, slowly, still looking out at the sunlight, "would you be very sorry, and very much surprised, if I were to go there before long?"
"I should not be very much surprised, Nettie," answered her mother, in a tone that told all the rest. Her child's eye turned to her sorrowfully and understandingly.
"You'll not be very long before you'll be there too," she said. "Now kiss me, mother."
Could Mrs. Mathieson help it? She took Nettie in her arms, but instead of the required kiss there came a burst of passion that bowed her head in convulsive grief against her child's breast. The pent-up sorrow, the great burden of love and tenderness, the unspoken gratitude, the unspeakable longing of heart, all came in those tears and sobs that shook her as if she had forgotten on what a frail support she was half resting. Nay, nature must speak this one time; she had taken the matter into her own hands, and she was not to be struggled with, for a while. Nettie bore it—how did she bear it? With a little trembling of lip at first; then that passed, and with quiet sorrow she saw and felt the suffering which had broken forth so stormily. True to her office, the little peacemaker tried her healing art. Softly stroking her mother's face and head while she spoke, she said very softly and slowly,
"Mother, you know it is Jesus that said, 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.' You have the mourning now, but he will find the comfort by and by."
Ashamed of her giving way, and of her having left it to the weak one to act the part of the strong, Mrs. Mathieson checked herself, held up her head and dried her tears. Nettie lay down wearily.
"I will stay here, mother," she said, "till tea is ready; and then I will come." Mrs. Mathieson went to attend to it.