He knew better than most children of his age what was meant by

death, and as he lay awake, thinking how dreadful it was to have no

mother, his thoughts turned toward his father, who had that day been

too much absorbed in his own grief to notice him.

"Maybe he'll love me some now ma is dead," he thought, and with that

yearning for paternal sympathy natural to the motherless, he crept

out of bed, and groping his way with his noiseless crutches to his

father's door, he knocked softly for admittance.

"Who's there?" demanded Dr. Kennedy, every, nerve thrilling to the

answer.

"It's me, father; won't you let me in, for its dark out here, and

lonesome, with her lying in the parlor. Oh, father, won't you love

me a little, now mother's dead? I can't help it because I'm lame,

and when I'm a man I will earn my own living. I won't be in the way.

Say, pa, will you love me?"

He remembered the charges his father had preferred against him, and

the father remembered them too. She to whom the cruel words were

spoken was gone from him now and her child, their child, was at the

door, pleading for his love. Could he refuse? No, by every kindly

feeling, by every parental tie, we answer, No; he could not; and

opening the door he took the little fellow in his arms, hugging him

to his bosom, while tears, the first he had shed for many a year,

fell like rain upon the face of his crippled boy. Like some mighty

water, which breaking through its prison walls seeks again its

natural channel, so did his love go out toward the child so long

neglected, the child who was not now to him a cripple. He did not

think of the deformity, he did not even see it. He saw only the

beautiful face, the soft brown eyes and silken hair of the little

one, who ere long fell asleep, murmuring in his dreams, "He loves

me, ma, he does."

Surely the father cannot be blamed if, when he looked again upon the

calm face of the dead, he fancied that it wore a happier look, as if

the whispered words of Louis had reached her unconscious ear. Very

beautiful looked Matty in her coffin--for thirty years had but

slightly marred her youthful face, and the doctor, as he gazed upon

her, thought within himself, "she was almost as fair as Maude

Glendower."

Then, as his eye fell upon the rosebud which Janet had laid upon her

bosom, he said, "'Twas kind in Mrs. Blodgett to place it there, for

Matty was fond of flowers;" but he did not dream how closely was

that rosebud connected with a grave made many years before.




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