ly that
she would be Wellesly's wife. Then she would think that her hesitancy
was because she really preferred not to marry any one, and that she
would always feel the same doubts.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice the
unusual abstraction of the child. With one chubby fist grasping her
forefinger and the other trailing, head downward, a big yellow
chrysanthemum, he trudged silently by her side, his red fez making a
spot of bright color against her white dress. He was wondering why he
had no mamma. Many times he had talked the matter over with
Marguerite, but she had never been able to explain it to his entire
satisfaction. He accepted her statements when she made them, but as
they did not seem to him to justify the fact, she had to make them all
over again the next time he thought of the subject. That day he had
visited a little playmate who had both a big sister and a mamma, and
as he walked across the mesa with Marguerite his small brain was busy
with the problem and his childish heart was full of longing. He lifted
his serious, puzzled face, with its big, blue, childishly earnest eyes
to his sister, who was as absorbed in her problem as was he in his.

"Say, Daisy, why haven't I got a mamma, just like Janey?"

"Darling, our mamma, yours and mine, has gone to Heaven."

"What did she go there for?"

"Because God wanted her to go there and live with Him."

"Did God take her to Heaven?"

"Yes, dear."

"Well, it was awful mean for Him to do that."

"Oh, my darling! My little Bye-Bye mustn't say such things!
Everything God does is right. Poor mamma was so ill she could not stay
with us any longer, and God took her to Heaven to make her well."

"Is she ill in Heaven?"

"No, dearie. She is well and happy in Heaven, and so is every one who
goes there."

"When I go to Heaven shall I see my mamma?"

"Yes, dear."

The child was silent for a few moments and Marguerite turned again to
her own thoughts. She scarcely heard him when he spoke again:

"Heaven is up in the sky, ain't it, Daisy?"

His eyes were caught by the sunset glow on the Hermosa mountains and
he did not press her for confirmation of his idea. The swelling flanks
and the towers and pinnacles and castellated crags of the rugged
Hermosa range were glowing and flaming with the tenderest, deepest
pink, as though the living granite had been dyed in the blood of
crimson roses. The eastern sky, vivid with seashell tints,