And father said, ‘Bring her the child.’

I had dressed the poor little thing—­a pretty boy, and would have been a fine man—­in one of the gowns I had taken a pleasure in sewing for it to wear, and the little cap with the crimped border that had been Ellen’s own when she was a baby and her mother’s pride, and I brought it and put it in her arms, and it was clay-cold in my hands as I carried it.  And she laid its head on her breast as well as she could for her weakness; and father, who was leaning over her, nigh mad with love and being so anxious about her, he says—­

‘Let Lucy take the poor little thing away, Ellen,’ he says, ’for you must try to get well and strong for the sake of those that love you.’

Then she says, turning her eyes on him, shining like stars out of her pale face, and still holding her baby tight to her breast, ’I know what’s the best thing I can do for them as love me, and I’m doing it fast.  Kiss me, father, and kiss the baby too.  Perhaps if I hold it tight we’ll go out into the dark together, and God won’t have the heart to part us.’  And so she died.

And there was no one but me that touched her after she died, for all I am a cripple, and I laid her out, my pretty, with my own hands, and the baby in the hollow of her arm; and I put primroses all round them, and I took father to look at them when all was done, and we stood there, holding hands and looking at her lying there so sweet and peaceful, and looking so good too, whatever you may think, with all the trouble wiped off her face as if the Lord had washed it already in His heavenly light.

Now, Ellen was buried in the churchyard, and Parson, who was always a hard man, he would have her laid away to the north side, where no sun gets to for the trees and the church, and where few folks like to be buried.  But father, he said, ’No; lay her beside her mother, in the bit of ground I bought twenty years ago, where I mean to lie myself, and Lucy too, when her time comes, so that if the talk of rising again is true we shall be all together at the last, as kinsfolk should.’

So they laid her there, and her name was cut under mother’s on the headstone.

Father didn’t grieve and take on as some men do, but he was quieter than he used to be, and didn’t seem to have that heart in his work that he always had even after she had left us.  It seemed as if the spring of him was broken, somehow.  Not but what he was goodness itself to me then and always.  But I wasn’t his favourite child, nor could I have looked to be, me being what I am and she so sweet and pretty, and such a way with her.

And father went to church to the burying, but he wouldn’t go to service.  ’I think maybe there’s a God, and if there is, I have that in my heart that’s quite enough keeping in my own poor house, without my daring to take it into His.’

And so I gave up going too.  I wouldn’t seem to be judging father, not though I might be judged myself by all the village.  But when I heard the church-bells ringing, ringing, it was like as if some one that loved me was calling to me and me not answering; and sometimes when all the folk was in church, I used to hobble up on my crutches to the gate and stand there and sometimes hear a bit of the singing come through the open door.