And she was silent.  So were her sisters, awhile.  Thoughts of heaven made them serious.  They were sad, too.  When the youngest—­their darling Sue—­conversed in this strain, a cloud always came over their sunny faces.  They could scarcely tell why it was so; for they, too, loved to think of heaven.  But the language of their sister seemed to them to belong to another world; and often, in the midst of their brightest hopes, would come the fear, like a thunderbolt, that God would crush that cherished flower, and remove her from their embrace while she was young.

“Sue,” at length said Eliza, the eldest sister, “why do you always talk so much about heaven?”

“I don’t know,” was the reply; “perhaps, because I think a good deal about it.  I dreamed last night”——­

“Oh, I thought so,” said Maria, playfully interrupting her sister; “I should think the little fairies were playing hide and seek all around your pillow every night.  I wish they would whisper in my ears as they do in yours.  Why, the naughty things hardly ever speak to me, and when they do, they tell a very different story from those they tell you.  It is generally about falling down from a church steeple, or something of that kind.  Well, what did they say to you this time, dear?”

“I never had such a dream before,” said the favorite, her face glowing with a new, almost an unearthly radiance; “I mean I never had one just like it.  When dear mother died, you remember I told you a dream about the angels.  Last night I thought they came to me again, and I saw mother, too, so clearly!”

She stopped, and her eyes fell.  She seemed almost sorry that she had said as much; for she had not forgotten that the former dream to which she alluded had caused her sisters pain, and she thought, that perhaps she should make them unhappy again, if she related her dream of the night before.  But her sisters begged her to go on, and she did so.

“When I went to sleep,” said she, “I was thinking of—­of—­what father had said to me”—­and she burst into a flood of tears.  Her sisters wept, too; for they well remembered that their father had come home intoxicated that night, and that he had spoken very harshly to them all, and especially to the youngest.  They could not say much to console her.  What could they say?  Silently they wept, and by their tears and embraces they told her how deeply they sympathized with her, and how much they would do for her, if they could.  When the little dreamer was able to go on, she said,

“I was thinking about this when I went to sleep.  I thought I was crying, and wondering why God should let dear mother die, and leave us all alone, when I heard some one say, ‘Look up,’ I looked up in the sky, and all the stars were windows, and I saw through them.  I saw heaven—­so beautiful—­so beautiful!  I saw mother looking out of one of these windows, and she smiled, as she did when we brought the rose to her bed-side.  I heard her call my name, and she reached her arms toward me, and said, ‘You may come,’ Oh, this was not like other dreams”——­