She sat looking pensively towards the river for some time, with her cheek resting upon her husband’s shoulder, and occasionally watching the many gambols of her children as they sported at their feet.  At length she said:  “Charles, how deceitful to me looks the placid bosom of yonder rippling stream, as it reposes in quiet beauty, reminding me of the stream of time, on the ocean of human life when unmoved by the tumultuous storms of passion that so often agitate the human breast, and cause the waves to rise and the billows to swell before the surging storm.  Scarce six months have passed since that stream swept by in giant fury, and poor Willie was buried in its angry bosom.  O, Charles, do you know I cannot look upon that river without hearing again his last agonizing shriek, and seeing again his pale fearful gaze as he looked death in the face, for well must the dear boy have known that his doom was sealed; and oh, what agony must have filled his breast as he cast his last gaze upon us, imploring our assistance, and yet feeling it would be vain.”

“We will leave this place, as it awakens unpleasant memories.”

“It is best so,” continued she; “Even now the spirit of my dear brother seems hovering over me, whispering of the spirit land.  But Charles, I have something to say to you of importance.”

The husband looked earnestly and tenderly into the face of his wife, and she continued,

“Perhaps, my dear husband, you are not aware of my failing health, but I feel the necessity of having assistance in my household duties, and have thought perhaps it would be better to send for sister Ellen to come and stay with me a while.”

“Certainly, my dear, certainly; I will go after her to-morrow; forgive me, Matilda, that I have not thought of this before, but I think if you are relieved of part of your labor for a while, your health will improve.”

The poor wife smiled sadly, and pulling down a stalk laden with buds from an adjacent rose bush that stood waving on a flowery bank beside them, and pointing to a crimson bud enclosed in its casing of green, she said, “Charles, is not that a beautiful bud?”

He looked at it and answered in the affirmative.

“Do you think it will ever bloom?”

“I see no reason why it should not, it looks as promising as any one upon the stem.”

“But look a little closer, do you see that little worm gnawing at the very heart and sapping the secret springs of its life?”

Her husband gazed tearfully upon her, and she felt she was understood; and then pressed her to his heart in a passionate, fond embrace, and spoke words of comfort, and of hope and of life.

The wife smiled faintly upon him, and replied: 

“Even now there is such a weariness in my limbs that I do not feel as though I scarcely can reach our little cottage home, where we have spent so many happy hours together.”

They called their little Frank, who bore his grandfather’s name, and Willie, for the youngest was named for her dear brother, and pursued their way silently to the house, each wrapped in their own meditations.