Page:Wiggin--Marm Lisa.djvu/142

130 her eyes, she saw the firelight dancing on tinted walls, and an angel of deliverance sitting by her bedside,—a dear familiar woman angel, whose fair crowned head rose from a cloud of white, and whose sweet downward gaze held all of benignant motherhood that God could put into woman’s eyes.

Marm Lisa looked up dumbly and wonderingly at first, but the mind stirred, thought flowed in upon it, a wave of pain broke over her heart, and she remembered all; for remembrance, alas, is the price of reason.

"Lost! my twinnies, all lost and gone!" she whispered brokenly, with long, shuddering sobs between the words. "I look—look—look; never, never find!"

"No, no, dear," Mary answered, stroking the lines from her forehead, "not lost any more; found, Lisa—do you understand? They are found, they are safe and well, and nobody blames you; and you are safe, too, your new self, your best self unharmed, thank God; so go to sleep, little sister, and dream happy dreams!"

Glad tears rushed from the poor child’s eyes, tears of conscious happiness, and the burden rolled away from her heart now, as