| Share page |
|
916 HIDDEN IS NOT FORGOTTEN
other now until we meet in Heaven/ A week has passed. Yesterday morning she read in the paper that he was dead: that is why she wears mourning. Her sweetheart is dead, leaving a widow and three step-children, the paper said.
The black ribbon betokens mourning : the girl's face betokens it still more ! it is hidden in the heart, but will never be forgotten !
See, there are three stories; three leaves on one stalk. Do you wish for more clover-leaves ? There are many in the book of the heart—hidden but not forgotten ! |
||
|
THE PORTER'S SON
The General's family lived on the first floor ; the Porter's lived in the cellar ; there was a great distance between the two families—the whole of the ground-floor, and the difference in rank; but they lived under the same roof, and had the same outlook to the street and the yard. In the yard there was a grass-plot with a flowering acacia tree—when it did flower ; and under it sat sometimes the smartly-dressed nurse, with the still more smartly-dressed child, the General's, ' Little Emily.' Before them the Porter's little boy, with the brown eyes and dark hair, used to dance on his bare feet, and the child laughed, and stretched out her little hands to him, and when the General saw it from his window, he nodded down to them, and said, ' Charming ! ' The General's lady, who was so young that she could almost have been his daughter by an earlier marriage, never looked out to the yard, but had given orders that the cellar-folks' little boy might play for the child, but must not touch it. The nurse kept strictly to the lady's orders.
And the sun shone in upon the people in the first floor, and upon those in the cellar ; the acacia tree put forth its blossoms, they fell off, and new ones came again next year ; the tree bloomed, and the Porter's little boy bloomed, he looked like a fresh tulip. The General's daughter grew delicate and pale, like the pink leaf of the acacia flower. She seldom came down now under the tree ; she took her |
||