Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/35

 what shall I do when you are gone? you have always been my pride and darling! you do everything just right for me — you fix my pillow easy, and you make my tea just sweet enough, and you can always make Jemmie quiet, and the girls are contented when you are in the house. Oh, Lucy, if I could only do anything for you!"

"You can, father," replied Lucy, laying her cheek wet with tears to his: "always speak kind to mother and poor Jemmie!"

Her father promised, and remembered, for the first time, that others were to suffer severely, as well as himself, from Lucy's departure.

Jemmie, the poor little boy who was the object of his sister's intense love and tender care, had received a terrible injury when he was three years old from a fall from a horse, on which his father, in a fit of intoxication, and in spite of his mother's entreaties and remonstrances, had insisted on placing him. The child's back was protruded, and his limbs withered, but his mind had a preternatural development. Lucy withdrew from her father's bed to prepare Jemmie's supper. He, meanwhile, was lying in his basket-cradle, his soft black eye following his sister, and tear after tear trickling down his unnaturally pale cheek. She sat down on her accustomed seat beside him. He took in silence one or two swallows, and then gently pushing away the spoon, he said, "It chokes me, Lucy! I can't eat to-night." Lucy set away the cup of tea, and, putting her lips to his, whispered, "Don't feel so, Jemmie."

"How can I help it, Lucy ?"

"Oh, we must do as mother says — look at the