I told him of the event the morning after the funeral, from which I returned with his father, in the dusk of the evening, calling for the child to go home and sleep with me, which he always was delighted to do. He was put to bed in the room where his mother had died, and I went in with him, to explain her absence, if he should notice it. But he was tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did _not_,--not even when he woke in the morning. At last, I said to him, "Do you see what room we are in?" He rose up and looked around, and said, "Why, it is my mother's chamber! Where is my mother?" I paused a moment to see if he would divine the truth, and then said, "The dear Heavenly Father has taken her at last!" He fell back on the pillow, with a single exclamation of _not painful wonder_, and a countenance sublime with the mingled expression of awe, love, and joyful satisfaction. The fact of her absent body seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her deathless soul, than even her form and word, which had represented it to his senses. He was "silent, as we grow when feeling most," as if he realized that he was in the presence of the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." You may be sure I respected this sacred silence, which seemed to me to last several minutes, but possibly it was only _one_. At last he said gently, "Was the window open?" I replied, "I don't know; I only know our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you know, took her to himself. He does not mind about windows, you know." "_No, indeed!_ I know that very well," he said, with a little laugh (as if he wondered at his momentary lapse of thought). Soon he asked, "Did He give her a new body right away?" "I do not know anything more about that than _you_ do," I replied; "I only know He will do better things for her than we can think of." "Do you think," said he, "that she looks beautiful as she used to?" but, before I could reply, he suddenly added, "I want to _go_ to my mother. I want to see her _now_," and began to cry.
I kissed him, and began gently to recall the conversation that she had had with him the day she told him she expected soon to leave him; and, after a while, he said spontaneously, as he had done when he talked with her he "would stay with his father to comfort him for the loss of her." His father told me afterwards, that when he saw _him_, he went over the same ground again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go to her; but when his father represented to him how solitary he should be with no wife or son to show their love to him, F. closed the conversation with the words, "Well, I will stay with you till I grow up" (as if it was quite within his option to do so or not).