H, dear! I have such a pain in my head!" said little Bertha to Maud, as she laid her

head wearily in her sister's lap, one day, only a few days after the incidents narrated in the foregoing chapter. "Feel how hot it is," she said; and Maud put her hand on the child's forehead, and found it burning; and saying she was sure she must

I

have a very bad headache, placed her gently on a sofa, and then hastened to tell her mother, who immediately put the child into bed, and then left the room to consult with her husband, and have a doctor sent for. Maud was also going, but little Bertha called her back.

"Stay, Maud," she said, "I want to speak to you. I wish the pain in my head would be better for a little, whilst I tell you It's very bad! but don't go. I'll

try to say what I want.

Do you

think you would all much grieved if I were to die, and go to be an angel in heaven ?"

be

very

"Oh! Bertha," said Maud, "how you talk! Why think of such a thing?"

"I'm afraid poor mamma would be very much grieved," she went on, "and I want to tell you, Maud, that you must try and comfort her, if I die

"But it's nonsense talking in that way, Bertha, you need not think of dying now!"

I'm

"Well, I don't know-I'm not sure (oh! how bad this pain is!); but I think-it seems to me that I'm going to die before long-perhaps very soon. very sorry that I ever was naughty, or that I ever vexed mamma or any of you. Oh, dear! the pain is so bad! But I want you very much to promise me that you'll comfort mamma when I'm dead ?"

"My darling little sister!" said Maud, kissing her feverish cheek, "I wish you would not torment yourself with such thoughts! I dare say you will soon be quite well again!"

"No, Maud, I don't think I shall," she said; "and

A FADING FLOWER.

131

Do pro

I can't feel satisfied unless you promise me. mise me that you will try to comfort poor mamma."

"Well, well, dear, if that will be any satisfaction to you, I promise you that I will—I solemnly promise you!" she said, with tears in her eyes, and wondering what could have led the child to take so strange a fancy-the like of which she never before had done, although, apparently, she had been much more seriously indisposed than now; whilst the words she had just addressed to her had a strangely impressive effect, and she could not shake off a feeling of fear and dread as of some approaching calamity.

Meanwhile, little Bertha, after a faint smile and look of contentment, on receiving the desired promise, closed her eyes, and remained perfectly motionless, either in sleep or a kind of stupor; and as Maud contemplated the death-like stillness of the little form, she could not prevent herself from thinking with a shudder, that perhaps her beloved little sisters' words would prove prophetic, and, much moved, she burst into tears; and then-fearing to have disturbed or alarmed her-apprehensively looked towards the bed. But the little figure did not move, nor the eyes unclose; and Mrs Harebell now entering the apartment, Maud hastened to her own room, and there gave way to a copious fit of weeping, for the cause of which she could not have given any satisfactory reason.

When the doctor arrived, he pronounced little Bertha's illness to be the commencement of an attack of water on the brain. And during a few days, despite all that could be done to arrest the progress of

the malady, it continued to increase-during the whole of which time the little sufferer seldom spoke, and never coherently; and then, she one day drew her mother's face, as she was bending over, down to hers to be kissed, when, opening her eyes very wide, she gazed around the room wonderingly, as if she had seen the space filled with some beautiful vision, and then, with a gentle sigh, she closed her eyes, her head seemed to sink deeper into the pillows, whilst the little white face assumed a perfectly-composed, peaceful, and happy look-her bright golden-coloured hair, like a halo, lying in a soft and wavy ring on the pillow around it. Little Bertha's spirit had flown away from its earthly tenement !

We will not attempt to describe the sorrow of the grief-stricken parents, nor the regrets of the whole family, nor the wonderful change that the death of this little child-as the death of a child so often does-made to them all. As for the mother, she missed her indescribably at almost every instant of the day. Mr Harebell, too, sadly missed his little daughter when he returned home in an evening. It was pretty Bertha, with her smiling, happy face, who used to run to meet him, and take his hat and stick, bring his slippers, and lay the newspaper ready for him. Christopher had been in the habit of telling stories to her in the evenings-mostly drawn from what he had been reading-and it had been a source of much interest to him to provide something during the day to tell to Bertha in the evening, which, as he had taught her to expect, she failed not to ask for;

SADDENING THOUG
HOUGHTS.

133

and now he found that he had lost what at the time he had no idea was so great and constant a pleasure. Lilian and Maud were surprised to find how much their little sister had been in their thoughts-how much they had been in the habit of thinking: "This or that will be just the thing for her-will please, amuse, or be in some way well for, Bertha ;" and how great an amusement, pleasure, and interest, having so to think, was to themselves! Walter and Jasper had been in the habit of constructing playthings for her, which, of course, was no small amusement to them; and, moreover, had become used to have-what she considered as such their extraordinary skill and cleverness admired and wondered at by little Bertha ; and she had always to be present on such important occasions as the letting off of fireworks of their own making, the ascension of their monster kite, mimic balloons, and all other such-like experiences, and the more scientific they were, and consequently the less she understood of them, the more she admired them.

Each individual, too, felt so strange and oppressive a sense of stillness and void in the house, as could hardly have been supposed possible to result merely from the absence of one small inmate. But they could not think of her as quite gone from them. It seemed to them that her spirit must be somewhere near to and about them; and the realities of another state of existence seemed more familiar than hitherto, and to gleam in sudden flashes of conviction, not on all alike, but in some measure beyond what they