Page:A New England Tale.djvu/39

28 No, Jane, let us keep clean hands, and then we shall have light hearts."

The next morning arrived, and Mary arose before the dawn, in order to remove Jane early, and save her the pain of witnessing the preparations for the vendue. Jane understood her kind friend's design, and silently acquiesced in it, for she had too much good sense to expose herself to any unnecessary suffering. But when every thing was in readiness, and the moment of departure arrived, she shrunk back from Mary's offered arm, and sinking into a chair, yielded involuntarily to the torrent of her feelings. She looked around upon the room and its furniture as if they were her friends.

It has been said by one, who well understands the mysteries of feeling, that objects which are silent every where else, have a voice in the home of our childhood. Jane looked for the last time at the bed, where she had often sported about her mother, and rejoiced in her tender caresses—at the curtains, stamped with illustrations of the Jewish history, which had often employed and wearied her ingenuity in comprehending their similitudes—at the footstool on which she had sat beside her mother; and the old family clock,

Her eye turned to the glass, which now sent back her wo-begone image, and she thought of the