said she, "how Prudy and I will feel!" She would have
said more, but was afraid she should make another mistake.

She kissed the unconscious little sufferer good by, though still it all
seemed like a dream. Was this the same boy who had tried to wash the
piggy? The same who had meal-bags tied to his feet?

"A long kiss is a heart-kiss," she repeated to herself; and somehow she
wondered if Charlie couldn't take it to heaven with him. Then she walked
home all alone with her thoughts.

Next day they told her Charlie was dead. Dotty sat on the sofa for a
long time without saying a word; then she went into the nursery, and
staid by herself for an hour or two. When she returned she had her new
doll in her arms, dressed in black. She wore a strip of black crape
about her own neck, and had caught Flyaway long enough to put one upon
her arm, as well as upon the knobs of the nursery doors.

"Prudy," said she, "it is polite to do so when we lose people we love.
Charlie was my friend and Katie's friend, and we shall treat him with
the _respect_ of a friend."

"Yes," said Katie, skipping after a fly, "spec of a fend."

Dotty had never looked on death.

"You musn't be frightened, little sister," said Prudy, as they walked
hand in hand to Mrs. Gray's, behind the rest of their own family, on the
day of the funeral. "Charlie is just as cold as marble, lying in a
casket; but _he_ doesn't know it. The part of him that _knows_ is in a
beautiful world where we can't see him."

"Why can't we see him?" said Dotty, peering anxiously into the sky.

"I don't know exactly why," replied Prudy, "but Grandma Read says God
doesn't wish it. And He has put a seal over our eyes, so an angel could
stand right before us, and we shouldn't know it."

"Ah!" said Dotty in a low voice; and though she could see nothing, it
seemed to her the air was full of angels.

"But I think likely Charlie can see us, Dotty, for the seal has been
taken off his eyes. O, it is beautiful to be dead!"

After this Dotty was not at all afraid when she touched the cold face in
the casket, for she knew Charlie was not there.

"It is beautiful to be dead!" said she next day to Katie. "Charlie is
very glad of it."

"Yes, he's in the ground-up,--in heaven!" said Katie in a dreamy way;
for, in her small mind, she believed heaven was a place called "in the
ground-up," and that was all she cared about it.

"Yes, Charlie is in the ground," replied Dotty, "but he doesn't k