Bessie's Fortune

"And don't you love me now, Archie?" she asked, kneeling beside him with her white arms across his knees, while she looked into his face with the old look she could assume so easily, and which moved even this weak man.

Laying his thin, pale hands upon her head, he burst into tears and said; "Yes, Daisy, I have always loved you, though you have made no part of my life these many years."

"And have you missed me? Have you been unhappy without me?" she asked, and he replied: "Missed you? Yes; but I have not been unhappy, for I have had Bessie. No man could be unhappy with Bessie, I think I will go in now and find her. I am better with her; and the birds are not singing here."

"What birds?" Daisy asked, looking curiously at him, as, with closed eyes, he leaned wearily back in his chair and replied: "The birds which sing to me so often; birds of the future, and the past, too, I think they are, for they sing sometimes of you, but oftener of Bessie and a journey far away where she is going to be happy when we are both gone and the winds are blowing across our graves--over there," and he pointed toward the little yard where his father and mother were lying side by side, and where he soon would lie.

For an instant Daisy shuddered, and fancied she felt an icy chill, as if her husband's words were words of prophecy and a blast were blowing upon her from some dark, cold grave. But she was too young to die; death was not for her these many years; it was only waiting for this enfeebled man, whom she wheeled back to the house where Bessie was, and where the birds he heard so often came and sang to him of green fields and flowery meadows beyond the sea, where he saw always Bessie with a look of rest and sweet content upon her face, instead of the tired, watchful, waiting look habitual to it now.

And so, listening to the birds, he fell asleep, as was his wont, and Daisy shook off the chill which had oppressed her, and busied herself with the preparations for her journey.