Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/102



was sickness in the dwelling of the emigrant. Stretched upon his humble bed, he depended on that nursing care which a wife, scarcely less enfeebled than himself, was able to bestow. A child, in its third summer, had been recently laid to its last rest beneath a turf mound under their window. Its image was in the heart of the mother, as she tenderly ministered to her husband.

“Wife, I am afraid I think too much about poor little Thomas. He was so well and rosy when we left our old home, scarcely a year since. Sometimes I feel, if we had but continued there, our darling would not have died.”

The tear which had long trembled, and been repressed by the varieties of conjugal solicitude, burst forth at these words. It freely overflowed the brimming eyes, and relieved the suffocating emotions which had striven for the mastery.

“Do not reproach yourself, dear husband. His time had come. He is happier there than here. Let us be thankful for those that are spared.”

“It seems to me that the little girls are growing pale. I am afraid you confine them too closely to this narrow house, and to the sight of sickness. The weather is growing settled. You had better send them out to change the air, and run about at their will. Mary, lay the baby on the bed by me, and ask mother to let little sister and you go out for a ramble.”

The mother assented, and the children, who were four and six years old, departed, full of delight. A clearing had been made in front of their habitation, and, by ascending a knoll in its vicinity, another dwelling might be seen environed with the dark spruce and hemlock. In the rear of these houses was a wide expanse of ground, interspersed with thickets, rocky acclivities, and patches of forest