You may be very sure that Nannie did not eat any of the berries. She felt as though the smallest one among them would choke her. She did not utter a word of complaint, however, and kept back her tears till she went up to bed, alone. Then she could scarcely say her prayers for weeping, and when she came to repeat her sweet little evening hymn, she said the first lines in this way--
/* "Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, Bless _my_ little lamb to-night!" */
Here she quite broke down, and was only able to sob out--
"Oh, yes, dear Jesus, do bless poor Snowdrop, for he's away off among strangers! Please to make people good to him--for you used to love little lambs and children too."
Just at this moment, Nannie heard a plaintive familiar cry--"Ma! Ma!" She sprang up from her knees, and ran to the window--and there, right down before her, in the moonlight, stood Snowdrop! In a minute, she had him in her arms, and was hugging him to her heart!
On the lamb's neck hung a little letter, saying that he was sent back as a present to Nannie, from Robert Grey.
I need hardly tell you that Snowdrop was never sold again. He lived with Nannie till she was a woman, and he a very venerable sheep; and then he died a peaceful death, and was buried in the garden, and real snowdrops grew over his grave.
"Love was once a little boy," the old song says, and so was I; though I cannot flatter myself that beyond this there is any point of resemblance between Love and me,--stay, there is one strong one--I was extravagantly fond of shooting with a bow and arrow, and we all know that Love does nothing else but travel about shooting his little arrows into folks' hearts. _I_ never shot anything but bull-frogs.
But I haven't got to my "trowsers" yet, have I? I don't see what made me think about Love here, for if poets and painters tell the truth, _he_ never knew anything about trowsers--at least, he never _had_ any.
I had toddled patiently through nearly four years of that period in the life of boys when there is little in their dress to distinguish them from girls, and which period is therefore a most aggravating memory to boys in general, when my mother astounded and delighted me one morning by the announcement that I was to have a pair of trowsers--that they were even then almost finished. What a whirl my little head was in all that day, to be sure! How my incipient manhood swelled and swaggered, impatient of the trammels of frocks and pantalettes! What dreams I had that night!