“I shall not leave them though.”
“And should you marry, dear Bella?”
“Pas si beta! I love Josy too well to leave her, now that I find myself necessary to her happiness. I love Edwin, too; he has behaved nobly to me, and generously. The only man I ever could have married is lost to me. So, Ellen, I can lead a single life, and be a nice old maid.”
And she kept her word, reader; never was there so kind, so pleasant a companion as my friend Isabel.
THE SONG OF THE AXE.
———
BY ALFRED B. STREET.
———
I was born deep down—deep down in the sable depths of the mine,