Molly sat thinking it over gratefully, after her cousin had left the room.

“How kind and thoughtful for others she is! how sweet and gentle, how patient and resigned.  I will try to be more like her.  How truly she obeys the command ‘Be pitiful, be courteous.’

“But why should one so lovely, so devoted a Christian, be visited with so sore a trial?  I can see why my trials were sent.  I was so proud and worldly; and they were necessary to show me my need of Jesus; but she has loved and leaned upon him since she was a little child.”

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

             “Let them die,
    Let them die now, thy children! so thy heart
    Shall wear their beautiful image all undimm’d
    Within it to the last.” 
                                   —­Mrs. Hemans.

Lily seemed a little stronger in the morning, and the brothers and sisters were allowed to go in by turns and speak to her.

Violet chose to be the last, thinking that would, perhaps, secure a little longer interview.

Lily with mamma by her side, lay propped up with pillows—­her eyes bright, a lovely color on her almost transparent cheek, her luxurious hair lying about her like heaps of shining gold, her red lips smiling a joyous welcome, as Vi stooped over her.

Could it be that she was dying?

“Oh, darling, you may get well even yet?” cried Vi, in tones tremulous with joy and hope.

Lily smiled, and stroked her sister’s face lovingly with her little thin white hand.

Violet was startled by its scorching heat.

“You are burning up with fever!” she exclaimed, tears gushing from her eyes.

“Yes; but I shall soon be well,” said the child clasping her sister close; “I’m going home to the happy land to be with Jesus, Vi; oh, don’t you wish you were going too?  Mamma I’m tired; please tell Vi my text.”

“’And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick; the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity,’” the mother repeated in a low sweet voice.

“For Jesus’ sake,” softly added the dying one.  “He has loved me and washed me from my sins in his own blood.”

Vi fell on her knees by the bedside, and buried her face in the clothes, vainly trying to stifle her bursting sobs.

“Poor Vi,” sighed Lily.  “Mamma, comfort her.”

Mamma drew the weeper to her bosom, and spoke tenderly to her of the loving Saviour and the home he has gone to prepare for his people.

“Our darling will be so safe and happy there,” she said, “and she is glad to go, to rest in his bosom, and wait there for us, as, in his own good time, he shall call one after another to himself.

    “’Tis there we’ll meet,
      At Jesus’ feet,
      When we meet to part no more.’”

Tears were coursing down the mother’s cheeks as she spoke, but her manner was calm and quiet.  To her, as to her child standing upon the very brink of Jordan, heaven seemed very near, very real, and while mourning that soon that beloved face and form would be seen no more on earth she rejoiced with joy unspeakable, for the blessedness that should be hers forever and forevermore.