“Oh, good Mrs. Williams, do, do let me see her alone, before they are all up!”
Whether the woman’s heart was touched, or that she foresaw she could not easily rid herself of his importunities, we know not, but rising and opening the door, she said, “You’re a very foolish boy, to be crying so about your sister! Like as not, you’ll never see her again after you leave here! But go down stairs, I’ll send her to you.”
A few minutes, and the little Amy was clasped in the arms of her brother. She was the same little fragile being that we saw watching beside the form of her dead mother; but there was a subdued shade of touching sadness in her sweet face, that showed the blight of sorrow was on her young heart. Twining her arms about her brother’s neck, and kissing the tears from his cheeks, she said,
“Dear Buhddy, don’t cry. I know that they are going to take you a long way from me; but don’t cry, dear Buhddy, I shall not be left alone long. I am going to dear mamma. Last night, when they told me they were going to send you away from me, oh, how I cried. I could not sleep; and then Sarah whipped me, because I kept her awake. I could not help crying—I tried not to cry; and then I dreamed there came such a beautiful little angel, and it sat down beside me, and told me not to cry, for it was going to take me home to dear mamma. You will go too, wont you, Arthur?”
“I dreamed, too, that the angels had taken you away; but you wont go, dear Amy, will you? I will grow to be a man; I will get money, and come and take you to a pretty home.”
“Will dear mamma be there, Arthur?”
“No, mamma’s dead!” and here again the tears filled his eyes.
“Buhddy—what is dead?”
“I don’t know; but they put her, when she was so pale and cold, and could not speak to us, into the ground; and they said that her spirit had gone to a good Father in Heaven, who made her die, and can do any thing. But I don’t think him a good Father, who let the fire burn up our beautiful home, and killed papa, and made dear mamma die of cold and hunger, (as that good man said she did, who cried so, when he came in and found her dead,) and let them bring us to this ugly old Alms-House.”
“Buhddy, but that pretty lady who came here the other day, and gave me those sweet flowers, said that God had taken mamma to his own beautiful home in the clouds, where there was no cold, and she could never die any more, and that we would go there too, if we are good. Dear mamma always said that God was good, Buhddy.”