Supper-time came, and Tom Orange did not return. Darkness closed over the old cottage, the poplar trees and the town, and the little boy said his prayers under the superintendence of worthy Marjory, and went to his bed.

He was disturbed in his sleep by voices talking in the room. He could only keep his eyes open for a little time, and he saw Tom Orange talking with mammy. He was at one side of the little table and she at another, and his head was leaning forward so as to approach uncomfortably near to the mutton-fat with a long snuff in the middle. Mammy, as he indiscriminately called “Granny,” was sobbing bitterly into her apron, and sometimes with streaming eyes, speaking so low that he could not hear, to Tom Orange.

Interesting as was the scene, slumber stole him away, and when he next wakened, Tom was gone, and mammy was sitting on the bed, crying as if her heart would break. When he opened his eyes, she said,—

“Oh, darlin! darlin’! My man—my own, own blessed man—my darlin’!” and she hugged him to her heart.

He remembered transports similar when two years ago he was very ill of a fever.

“I’m not sick, mammy, indeed; I’m quite well,” and with these assurances and many caresses, he again fell asleep.

In the morning his Sunday clothes, to his wonder, were prepared for him to put on. The little old faded crimson carpet-bag, which she had always told him, to the no small content of his self-importance, was his own, stood plump and locked on the little table under the clock. His chair was close beside mammy’s. She had all the delicacies he liked best for his breakfast. There was a thin little slice of fried bacon, and a new-laid egg, and a hot cake, and tea—quite a grand breakfast.

Mammy sat beside him very close. Her arm was round him. She was very pale. She tried to smile at his prattle, and her eyes filled up as often as she looked at him, or heard him speak.

Now and then he looked wonderingly in her face, and she tried to smile her old smile and nodded, and swallowed down some tea from her cup.

She made belief of eating her breakfast, but she could not.

When the wondering little man had ended his breakfast, with her old kind hands she drew him towards her.

“Sit down on my lap, my precious—my own man—my beautiful boy—my own angel bright. Oh, darlin’—darlin’—darlin’!” and she hugged the boy to her heart, and sobbed over his shoulder as if her heart was bursting.

He remembered that she cried the same way when the doctor said he was safe and sure to recover,

“Mammy,” he said, kissing her, “Amy has birthdays—and I think this is my birthday—is it?”

“No, darlin’; no, no,” she sobbed, kissing him. “No, my darlin’, no. Oh, no, ’taint that.”

She got up hastily, and brought him his little boots that she had cleaned. The boy put them on, wondering, and she laced them.

With eyes streaming she took up one of the little cork boats, which he kept on the window-stool floating in a wooden bowl.

“You’ll give me one of them, darlin’—to old mammy—for a keepsake.”

“Oh! yes. Choose a good one—the one with the gold paper on the pin; that one sails the best of all.”

“And—and”—she cried bitterly before she could go on—“and this is the little box I’ll put them in,” and she picked them out of the bowl and laid them in a cardboard box, which she quickly tied round. “And this is the last day of poor mammy with her bright only darlin’&............