“Yes, dear, what is it?” she asked.
“I want to come to your bed a minute—just a minute.”
“All right, come on, darling; don't stumble over anything.”
She heard him groping through the dark, and then felt his little hands on her wrinkled face.
“Granny,” he said, a tremor in his voice, “you told me if anybody ever said anything mean about my mother, that I must not let her know about it—never at all.”
“Yes, darling, that would be a nice, brave little man, for you wouldn't want to make her sad, would you?”
“Well, I had a terrible fight with Grover Weston over in Mr. Galt's yard. Grover said a nasty, mean thing about her. You told me not to let her know anything like that, and so did Mr. Galt, but mamma is begging me so hard.”
“Oh!” The old woman lifted the boy over her into the bed, and put her arms about him tenderly. “You can tell Granny about it, and then if she thinks best perhaps you may tell your mother.”
He complied, and the wondering old woman, as she lay with the child in her arms, heard the whole beautiful story in every detail, even to Galt's display of affection, and as she listened cold tears welled up in her old eyes and trickled down the furrows of her cheeks to her pillow. When it was over, she led the child back to his mother.
“Don't ask him any more about it. Wait,” she said, in an undertone, and with a significant gesture in the direction of her room. “Don't spoil a beautiful thing. God bless him! he is right—young as he is, he is right! The very angels of heaven are closing his sweet lips to-night. Don't bother him.”