m perhaps resting
on your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender admonition of
the days that are to come.

The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock, that ticked so plainly when
Charlie died, is ticking on the mantel still. The great table in the
middle of the room with its books and work waits only for the lighting
of the evening lamp, to see a return to its stores of embroidery, and of
story.

Upon a little stand under the mirror, which catches now and then a
flicker of the firelight, and makes it play wantonly over the ceiling,
lies that big book reverenced of your New-England parents,--the Family
Bible. It is a ponderous square volume, with heavy silver clasps that
you have often pressed open for a look at its quaint old pictures, or
for a study of those prettily bordered pages which lie between the
Testaments, and which hold the Family Record.

There are the Births,--your father's, and your mother's; it seems as if
they were born a long time ago; and even your own date of birth appears
an almost incredible distance back. Then there are the marriages,--only
one as yet; and your mother's maiden name looks oddly to you: it is hard
to think of her as any one else than your doting parent. You wonder if
your name will ever come under that paging; and wonder, though you
scarce whisper the wonder to yourself, how another name would look, just
below yours,--such a name, for instance, as Fanny, or as Miss Margaret
Boyne!

Last of all come the Deaths,--only one. Poor Charlie! How it
looks?--"Died 12 September 18--Charles Henry, aged four years." You know
just how it looks. You have turned to it often; there you seem to be
joined to him, though only by the turning of a leaf. And over your
thoughts, as you look at that page of the record, there sometimes
wanders a vague shadowy fear, which _will_ come,--that your own name may
soon be there. You try to drop the notion, as if it were not fairly your
own; you affect to slight it, as you would slight a boy who presumed on
your acquaintance, but whom you have no desire to know. It is a common
thing, you will find, with our world to decline familiarity with those
ideas that fright us.

Yet your mother--how strange it is!--has no fears of such dark fancies.
Even now as you stand beside her, and as the twilight deepens in the
room, her low, silvery voice is stealing upon your ear, telling you that
she cannot be long with you; that the time is coming when you must be