Bad Hugh

"Poor child, you are tired and worn. It is hard to lose him just as

there was a prospect of perfect reconciliation with us all," Mrs.

Richards said, softly smoothing the brown tresses lying on her lap, and

thinking even then that curls were more becoming to her daughter-in-law

than braids had been, but wondering why, now she was in mourning, Adah

had persisted in wearing them.

"Pretty girl, pretty turls, is you tyin'?" and won by her distress,

Willie drew near, and laid his baby hand upon the curls he thought so

pretty.

"That's mamma, Willie," Asenath said; "the mamma Aunt Anna said would

come some time--Willie's mamma. Can't he kiss her?"

The child could not resist the face which, lifting itself up, looked

eagerly at him, and he put up his little hands for Adah to take him,

returning the kisses she showered upon him and clinging to her neck,

while he said: "Is you mam-ma sure? I prays for mam-ma--God take care of her, and pa-pa

too. He's dead. They brought him back with a dum. Poor pa-pa, Willie

don't want him dead;" and the little lip began to quiver.

Never before since she knew she was a widow had Adah felt so vivid a

sensation of something akin to affection for the dead, as when her child

and his mourned so plaintively for papa; and the tears which now fell

like rain were not for Willie alone, but were given rather to the dead.

"Mrs. Richards has not yet greeted us," Asenath said; and turning to

her at once, Adah apologized for her seeming neglect, pressing both her

and Eudora's hands more cordially than she would have done a few moments

before.

"Where is Anna?" she asked; and Mrs. Richards replied: "She's sick. She regretted much that she could not come up here to-day;"

while Willie, standing in Adah's lap, with his chubby arm around her

neck, chimed in.

"You don't know what we've dot. We've dot 'ittle baby, we has."

Adah knew now why Anna was absent, and why Charlie Millbrook looked so

happy when at last he came in to see her, delivering sundry messages

from his Anna, who, he said could scarcely wait to see her dear sister.

There was something genuine in Charlie's greeting, something which made

Adah feel as if she were indeed at home, and she wondered much how even

the Richards race could ever have objected to him, as she watched his

movements and heard him talking with his stately mother.

"Yes, Major Stanley came," he said, in reply to her questions, and Adah

was glad it was put to him, for the blushes dyed her cheek at once, and

she bent over Willie to hide them, while Charlie continued: "Captain

Worthington came, too, Adah's brother, you know. He was in the same

battle with the doctor, was wounded rather seriously and has been

discharged, I believe."