No, no, I will not dwell on the recollection of that poor room, with its evidences of want, its signs of suffering; nor of all that might have been said and was not. By the bedside of the woman whom I had loved and lost, and who was now passing from the world into the great reality of life, I had few words to speak. The only witness of the promise I made—except the Lord and His angels—was the silently weeping girl, his only remaining child. Almost the only words were:—
"Mary."
"Dick."
And the child stood there clasping her mother's hand—my hand; to be in future my child and the child of the mother in heaven; and who shall tell but at the resurrection——
Ah! I hear her foot upon the stair, her sweet voice singing as she comes—that sweet sweet voice that one day, maybe, will sing me to sleep.
——————————————
"Ah-h-h!" sighed Mrs. Parmigan, who had listened to the last two stories without saying a word but with an expression of wonder. "How you can remember so much about people I can't imagine; but really, my dear, these love stories never do end except in the saddest way. Now if I could only write a tale, which I know is, of course, quite impossible, it should be every word of it true, and everybody should be as happy as the day is long."
"But then you see, dear Mrs. Parmigan, that wouldn't be every word true," said Miss Grantley with her grave smile. "I hope, my dear young friends here are mostly happy with me at school, but there are times when we don't feel altogether in harmony, and lessons are not learned, and our tempers get the upper hand, and the sun seems to have gone behind a cloud and the world turns the wrong way, till the storm lowers and breaks, and then come regret and forbearance, and the stillness, and 'the gentle shining after rain.' Life is often a rather difficult school, and our education in this world is not completed without trouble and the discipline of pain and the finding of strength through weakness and of truth through error. But come, old lady, I am not to be led into a lecture, especially to a person of your years and experience, so tell me what you mean,—where am I to find 'a love story,' as you call it, that shall be without bitter-sweet, and come to a bright ending without going through a dark passage?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, my dear, I was first thinking of my own very happy, but at the same time very commonplace and unromantic married life with Mr. Parmigan, who, as you know, was in the Bank of England, and came home as regularly as the clock struck half-past five; but then I was trying to recall what Mrs. Schwartz the cooper's wife was telling you that day when we went into her house out of the rain after our long walk from Fernside."
"What! has that pretty, fair, round rosy-cheeked German woman a romance in her life?" asked Annie Bowers. "I declare I've often thought there must have been some kind of sentimental recollection in those great dreamy blue eyes. What a fine, strong-looking man her husband is too! Marion and I have often stood looking into the shed while he has been at work making tubs and casks, and sometimes we have heard him singing some German song as we walked that way. He speaks English so well too; but Mrs. Schwartz has a pretty buzzing accent, even the two flaxen-headed children have caught it, and talk in what seems to be a German idiom."