Rapidly and pleasantly to Mary that winter passed away, for the presence of Billy was in itself a sufficient reason why she should be happy.  He was so affectionate and brother-like in his deportment towards her, that she began questioning whether she did not love him as well, if not better, than she did her sister Ella, whom she seldom saw, though she heard that she had a governess from Worcester, and was taking music lessons on a grand piano which had been bought a year before.  Occasionally Billy called at Mrs. Campbell’s, but Ella seemed shy and unwilling to speak of her sister.

“Why is there this difference?” he thought more than once, as he contrasted the situation, of the two girls,—­the one petted, caressed, and surrounded by every luxury, and the other forlorn, desolate, and the inmate of a poor-house; and then he built castles of a future, when, by the labor of his own head or hands, Mary, too, should be rich and happy.

CHAPTER XI.

ALICE.

As spring advanced, Alice began to droop, and Sally’s quick eye detected in her infallible signs of decay.  But she would not tell it to Mary, whose life now seemed a comparatively happy one.  Mr. and Mrs. Parker were kind to her,—­the pleasant-looking woman and the girl with crooked feet were kind to her.  Uncle Peter petted her, and even Miss Grundy had more than once admitted that “she was about as good as young ones would average.”  Billy, too, had promised to remain and work for Mr. Parker during the summer, intending with the money thus earned to go the next fall and winter to the Academy in Wilbraham.  Jenny was coming back ere long, and Mary’s step was light and buoyant as she tripped singing about the house, unmindful of Miss Grundy’s oft-expressed wish that “she would stop that clack,” or of the anxious, pitying eyes Sal Furbush bent upon her, as day after day the faithful old creature rocked and tended little Alice.

“No,” said she, “I cannot tell her.  She’ll have tears enough to shed by and by, but I’ll double my diligence, and watch little Willie more closely.”  So night after night, when Mary was sleeping the deep sleep of childhood, Sally would steal noiselessly to her room, and bending over the little wasting figure at her side, would wipe the cold sweat from her face, and whisper in the unconscious baby’s ear messages of love for “the other little Willie, now waiting for her in Heaven.”

At last Mary could no longer be deceived, and one day when Alice lay gasping in Sally’s lap she said, “Aunt Sally isn’t Alice growing worse?  She doesn’t play now, nor try to walk.”

Sally laid her hand on Mary’s face and replied, “Poor child, you’ll soon be all alone, for Willie’s going to find his mother.”