——­“And you could deceive your old father, Nell”—­(very fondly.)

Nelly only clasps your hand in both of hers.

“And so you loved Will all the while?”

——­Nelly only stoops to drop a little kiss of pleading on your forehead.

——­“Well, Nelly,” (it is hard to speak roundly,) “give me your hand;—­here, Will,—­take it:—­she’s a wild girl;—­be kind to her, Will.”

“God bless you, sir!”

And Nelly throws herself, sobbing, upon your bosom.

——­“Not here,—­not here now, Nell!—­Will is yonder!”

——­Sobbing, sobbing still!  Nelly, Nelly,—­who would have thought that your merry face covered such a heart of tenderness!

III.

Grief and Joy of Age.

The Winter has its piercing storms,—­even as Autumn hath.  Hoary age, crowned with honor and with years, bears no immunity from suffering.  It is the common heritage of us all:  if it come not in the spring or in the summer of our day, it will surely find us in the autumn, or amid the frosts of winter.  It is the penalty humanity pays for pleasure; human joys will have their balance.  Nature never makes false weight.  The east wind is followed by a wind from the west; and every smile will have its equivalent in a tear!

You have lived long and joyously with that dear one who has made your life a holy pilgrimage.  She has seemed to lead you into ways of pleasantness, and has kindled in you—­as the damps of the world came near to extinguish them—­those hopes and aspirations which rest not in life, but soar to the realm of spirits.

You have sometimes shuddered with the thought of parting; you have trembled even at the leave-taking of a year, or of months, and have suffered bitterly as some danger threatened a parting forever.  That danger threatens now.  Nor is it a sudden fear to startle you into a paroxysm of dread:  nothing of this.  Nature is kinder,—­or she is less kind.

It is a slow and certain approach of danger which you read in the feeble step,—­in the wan eye, lighting up from time to time into a brightness, that seems no longer of this world.  You read it in the new and ceaseless attentions of the fond child, who yet blesses your home, and who conceals from you the bitterness of the coming grief.

Frank is away—­over-seas; and as the mother mentions that name with a tremor of love and of regret, that he is not now with you all,—­you recall that other death, when you too were not there.  Then, you knew little of a parent’s feeling; now, its intensity is present!

Day after day, as summer passes, she is ripening for that world where her faith and her hope have so long lived.  Her pressure of your hand at some casual parting for a day is full of a gentle warning, as if she said,—­prepare for a longer adieu!

Her language, too, without direct mention steeps your thought in the bitter certainty that she foresees her approaching doom, and that she dreads it only so far as she dreads the grief that will be left in her broken home.  Madge—­the daughter—­glides through the duties of that household like an angel of mercy:  she lingers at the sick-bed,—­blessing, and taking blessings.