The words caught Mignon's ear. She looked up. "Mamma," she said--"Mamma! Did _you_ make the music?" Her head fell back, she closed her eyes.--That was all.
"She loved music so dearly," said one of the women weeping.
"She has it now," replied the good old doctor, laying down the little hand from which the pulse had ebbed away. "Don't cry so over her, my good girl. She was a tender flower for such a life as this. Depend upon it, it is better as it is. Heaven is a home-like place for such little ones as she, and the angels' singing will be sweeter to her ears than the music of your brass band."
"WHERE is Annie?" demanded old Mrs. Pickens.
"I'm sure I don't know. Not far away, for I heard her voice just now singing in the woods near the house."
"That child is always singing, always," went on Mrs. Pickens in a melancholy voice. "What she finds to sing about in this miserable place I cannot imagine. It's really unnatural!"
"Oh, no! mother,--not unnatural. Remember what a child she is. She hardly remembers the old life, or misses it. The sun shines, and she sings,--she can't help it. We ought to be glad instead of sorry that she doesn't feel the changes as we do."
"Well, I _am_ glad," responded the old lady. "You needn't take me up so sharply, Susan. All I say is that it seems to me _unreasonable_."
Miss Pickens glanced about the room, and suppressed a sigh. It was, indeed, a miserable dwelling, scarcely better than a hut. Very few of you who read this have ever seen a place so comfortless or so poor. The roof let in rain. Through the cracked, uneven floor the ground could be distinctly seen. A broken window-pane was stopped by an old hat thrust into the hole. For furniture was only a rusty stove, a table, three chairs, a few battered utensils for cooking, and a bed laid on the floor of the inner room,--that was all. And the dwellers in this wretched home, for which they were indebted to the charity of friends scarcely richer than themselves, were ladies born and bred, accustomed to all the comforts and enjoyments of life.