ir as he walked along. And it must be allowed that Master
Jimmey's reflections were a little confused and uncomfortable, as he
pondered over the past and the future with the pestle in his fingers and
the doctor's awful words ringing in his ears.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

SHOWING HOW LITTLE LILY'S LIFE BEGAN TO CHANGE INTO A RETROSPECT; AND
HOW ON A SUDDEN SHE BEGAN TO FEEL BETTER.

As time wore on, little Lilias was not better. When she had read her
Bible, and closed it, she would sit long silent, with a sad look,
thinking; and often she would ask old Sally questions about her mother,
and listen to her, looking all the time with a strange and earnest gaze
through the glass door upon the evergreens and the early snowdrops. And
old Sally was troubled somehow, and saddened at her dwelling so much
upon this theme.

And one evening, as they sat together in the drawing-room--she and the
good old rector--she asked him, too, gently, about her; for he never
shrank from talking of the beloved dead, but used to speak of her often,
with a simple tenderness, as if she were still living.

In this he was right. Why should we be afraid to _speak_ of those of
whom we think so continually? She is not dead, but sleepeth! I have met
a few, and they very good men, who spoke of their beloved dead with this
cheery affection, and mingled their pleasant and loving remembrances of
them in their common talk; and often I wished that, when I am laid up in
the bosom of our common mother earth, those who loved me would keep my
memory thus socially alive, and allow my name, when I shall answer to it
no more, to mingle still in their affectionate and merry intercourse.

'Some conflicts my darling had the day before her departure,' he said;
'but such as through God's goodness lasted not long, and ended in the
comfort that continued to her end, which was so quiet and so peaceable,
we who were nearest about her, knew not the moment of her departure. And
little Lily was then but an infant--a tiny little thing. Ah! if my
darling had been spared to see her grown-up, such a beauty, and so like
her!'

And so he rambled on; and when he looked at her, little Lily was
weeping; and as he looked she said, trying to smile--

'Indeed, I don't know why I'm crying, darling. There's nothing the
matter with your little Lily--only I can't help crying: and I'm your
foolish little Lily, you know.'

And this often happened, that he found she was weeping when he look