“I was mighty mean to you sometimes, Ethelyn, and I’ve been sorry for it,” she said, as she stooped to kiss her daughter-in-law, and then hurried from the room, “Only to think, she called me mother,” she said to Melinda, to whom she reported the particulars of her interview with Ethelyn—­“me, who had been meaner than dirt to her—­called me mother, when I used to mistrust her she didn’t think any more of me than if I’d been an old squaw.  I shan’t forget it right away.”

Perhaps the sweetest, most joyful tears Ethelyn shed that day were those which came to her eyes when they brought her Ethelyn, her namesake, the little three-year-old, who pushed her brown curls back from her baby face with such a womanly air, and said: 

“I’se glad to see Aunt Ethie.  I prays for her ever’ night.  Uncle Andy told me so.  I loves you, Aunt Ethie.”

She was a beautiful little creature, and her innocent prattle and engaging manners did much toward bringing the color back to Ethie’s cheeks and the brightness to her eyes.  Those days of convalescence were blissful ones, for now there was no shadow of a cloud resting on the domestic horizon.  Between husband and wife there was perfect love, and in his newly born happiness, Richard forgot the ailments which had sent him an invalid to Clifton, while Ethie, surrounded by every luxury which love could devise or money procure, and made each hour to feel how dear she was to those from whom she had been so long estranged, grew fresh, and young, and pretty again; so that when, early in December, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren came to Davenport to see her niece, she found her more beautiful far than she had been in her early girlhood, when the boyish Frank had paid his court to her.  Poor little Nettie was dead.  Her life had literally been worried out of her; and during those September days, when Ethelyn was watched and tended so carefully, she had turned herself wearily upon her pillow, and just as the clock was striking the hour of midnight, asked of the attendant: 

“Has Frank come yet?”

“Not yet.  Do you want anything?”

“No, nothing.  Is mother here?”

“She was tired out, and has gone to her room to rest.  Shall I call her?”

“No, no matter.  Is Ethie in her crib?  Please bring her here.  Never mind if you do wake her.  ’Tis the last time.”

And so the little sleeping child was brought to the dying mother, who would fain feel that something she had loved was near her in the last hour of loneliness and anguish she would ever know.  Sorrow, disappointment, and cruel neglect had been her lot ever since she became a wife, but at the last these had purified and made her better, and led her to the Saviour’s feet, where she laid the little child she held so closely to her bosom, dropping her tears upon its face and pressing her farewell kiss upon its lips.  Then she put it from her, and bidding the servant remove the light, which made her eyes ache so, turned again upon her pillow, and folding her little, white, wasted hands upon her bosom, said softly the prayer the Saviour taught, and then glided as softly down the river whose tide is never backward toward the shores of time.