Page:Anne's house of dreams (1920 Canada).djvu/117

 it out. But she never screeched or cried again about it. She jumped from the loft onto the load and from the load to the floor, and caught up the little bleeding, warm, dead body, Anne—they had to tear it from her before she would let it go. They sent for me—I can’t talk of it.”

Miss Cornelia wiped the tears from her kindly brown eyes and sewed in bitter silence for a few minutes.

“Well,” she resumed, “it was all over—they buried little Kenneth in that graveyard over the harbor, and after a while Leslie went back to her school and her studies. She never mentioned Kenneth’s name—I’ve never heard it cross her lips from that day to this. I reckon that old hurt still aches and burns at times; but she was only a child and time is real kind to children, Anne, dearie. After a while she began to laugh again—she had the prettiest laugh. You don’t often hear it now.”

“I heard it once the other night,” said Anne. “It is a beautiful laugh.”

“Frank West began to go down after Kenneth’s death. He wasn’t strong and it was a shock to him, because he was real fond of the child, though, as I’ve said, Leslie was his favorite. He got mopy and melancholy, and couldn’t or wouldn’t work. And one day, when Leslie was fourteen years of age, he hanged himself—and in the parlor, too, mind you, Anne, right in the middle of the parlor from the