BY MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.
CHAPTER XIV.
The next few weeks worked a great and serious change in George. It was the first time he had seen death since he was ten years old, when his father died. That had made a great impression on him at the time, but the feelings of a child of ten and a youth of sixteen are very different. He had loved little Mildred dearly, and the child's death was a deep sorrow to him. The grief of his brother and sister was piteous. As the case often is, the father was the more overwhelmed, and the poor mother had to stifle her own grief to help her husband. George could not but love and admire his sister the more when he saw her calm fortitude, and how, inspired by love for her husband, she bore bravely the loss of her only child. Both Madam Washington and Betty had come to Mount Vernon the day of little Mildred's death. Madam Washington was obliged to return after a few days to her younger children, but George and Betty remained.
"For George is the heir now," said Laurence, with a sad smile, "and he must learn to manage what will one day be his own."
"Oh, brother," burst out George, with strange violence, "do you believe I wanted this place at the price of your child's life? I would give it all, twenty times over, to have her back!"
"If I had thought you coveted it, I should never have made you my heir," was Laurence's reply to this.
Never was there a kinder or more helpful soul than Betty, now a tall and beautiful girl of fourteen. Mrs. Washington's health was much shattered by this last and greatest sorrow, and Laurence, who had always been of a delicate constitution, became every day more feeble. George attended him assiduously, rarely leaving him. He persuaded his brother to ride out and take some interest in the place. He read to Laurence of evenings in the library, and tried to interest him with accounts of the new regions in which the younger brother had spent so many months. Nothing could ever make Laurence Washington a happy man again.
Mrs. Washington's sorrow, though as great, was better controlled. She always managed to wear a cheerful look before her husband, and although she was not able to accompany him in his out-door life, she was with him every moment he spent in-doors. Betty was to her as great a comfort as George was to Laurence Washington. Betty had so tender a heart and so excellent an understanding that she was as helpful as a woman twice her age, and these two young creatures were mainstays and comforts at an age when most young creatures rely wholly on other people.
All day they were engaged, each in gentle and untiring efforts to make life a little brighter to their brother and sister. But after the older persons had retired, every night, George and Betty would sit up over the fire in the library and talk for hours. Their conversations were not always sad—it is not natural for the young to dwell in sadness—but they were generally serious. One night Betty said:
"Don't you think, George, we ought to write to our mother and ask her to let us stay over Christmas with brother Laurence and sister Anne? You remember how gay it was last Christmas, and how glad we were to be here? Now I think when they are in great trouble we ought to be as willing to stay with them as when they were happy and bright and could make us enjoy ourselves."