f course they'll go there, and they orto be thankful they've got so
good a place--Get away.--That ain't my double gown;--that's a cloak.
Don't you know a cloak from a double gown?"

"Yes, yes," said Billy, whose mind was not upon his mother's
toilet--"but," he continued, "I want to ask you, can't we,--couldn't
you take them for a few days, and perhaps something may turn up."

"William Bender," said the highly astonished lady what can you mean? A
poor sick woman like me, with one foot in the grave, take the charge
of three pauper children! I shan't do it, and you needn't think of
it."

"But, mother," persisted Billy, who could generally coax her to do as
he liked, "it's only for a few days, and they'll not be much trouble
or expense, for I'll work enough harder to make it up."

"I have said _no_ once, William Bender, and when _I_ say no, I mean
no," was the answer.

Billy knew she would be less decided the next time the subject was
broached, so for the present, he dropped it, and taking his cap he
returned to Mrs. Howard's, while his mother started for Mrs.
Campbell's.

Next morning between the hours of nine and ten, the tolling bell sent
forth its sad summons, and ere long a few of the villagers were moving
towards the brown cottage, where in the same plain coffin slept the
mother and her only boy. Near them sat Ella, occasionally looking with
childish curiosity at the strangers around her, or leaning forward to
peep at the tips of the new morocco shoes which Mrs. Johnson had
kindly given her; then, when her eye fell upon the coffin, she would
burst into such an agony of weeping that many of the villagers also
wept in sympathy, and as they stroked her soft hair, thought, "how
much more she loved her mother than did Mary," who, without a tear
upon her cheek, sat there immovable, gazing fixedly upon the marble
face of her mother. Alice was not present, for Billy had not only
succeeded in winning his mother's consent to take the children for a
few days, but he had also coaxed her to say that Alice might come
before the funeral, on condition that he would remain at home and
take care of her. This he did willingly, for Alice, who had been
accustomed to see him would now go to no one else except Mary.

Billy was rather awkward at baby tending, but by dint of emptying his
mother's cupboard, blowing a tin horn, rattling a pewter platter with
an iron spoon, and whistling Yankee Doodle, he managed to keep her
tolerably q