e
said, "My baby, my darling." She did not cry, she only knelt there still
and silent; and then suddenly a great rush of feeling came over Arthur's
heart as the thought of sweet little Mildred lying dead came over his
mind, and he threw himself by his mother's side, burying his face on her
shoulder, and burst into a passion of crying. "Oh, mamma, mamma!" was all
he said. "Don't, Arthur; you had better go down stairs, my boy," said his
father gently. But his mother whispered, "Let him stay;" and she threw her
arms round him, and clasped him so tightly that he could hardly breathe.

Perhaps it was good for her to hear her child's sobs; they seemed to enter
into her heart and melt it, for it was icy in its mourning before.

"God has taken our little Mildred," said Arthur's father presently, in a
very choked, quivering voice. "He has taken her to be very happy with
Himself. He will take care of her for ever."

"I know it," said Arthur's mother; "better than we could."

Presently Arthur got up, and before he went away from the room he threw
his arms once more around his little dead sister, and the tears fell over
her golden curls and her round fair cheeks, which were still round and
red.

He cried himself to sleep that night, and when he awoke in the morning it
was with a dreary feeling that a great deal was gone. He was the only
child now, and as he stood by the little open grave where Mildred's tiny
coffin had been lowered, and as he felt the soft, tight clasp of his
mother's hand in his, Arthur felt he would be a loving boy to her.

CHAPTER II.

GOING TO INDIA.

The home seemed very sad and silent indeed without the little child who
had been laid in the low green-covered grave, and a sadness seemed to have
fallen upon it. At first Arthur went about the house silently and slowly,
and it was some time before his boyish spirits came back to him; but he
was only a boy after all, and a very young boy, and by and by, when the
green leaves came budding on the trees and the spring voice was waking in
the valleys and the fields, when the young lambs answered with their
bleating and the young birds sung a chorus of bursting joy, Arthur's face
brightened, and his step was bounding again. And his mother was glad to
see him with the weary cloud gone, only her heart ached with a deep throb
as she thought of the new care that was hanging over him, and of which he
knew nothing as yet.

One day, when Arthur was passing t