here?' he said cheerfully, as he closed his book. 'It does me
good to see you in the air and light. I feared you were again in the
church, where you so often are.'

'Feared!' replied the child, sitting down beside him. 'Is it not a
good place?'

'Yes, yes,' said the schoolmaster. 'But you must be gay
sometimes--nay, don't shake your head and smile so sadly.'

'Not sadly, if you knew my heart. Do not look at me as if you thought
me sorrowful. There is not a happier creature on earth, than I am now.'

Full of grateful tenderness, the child took his hand, and folded it
between her own. 'It's God's will!' she said, when they had been
silent for some time.

'What?'

'All this,' she rejoined; 'all this about us. But which of us is sad
now? You see that I am smiling.'

'And so am I,' said the schoolmaster; 'smiling to think how often we
shall laugh in this same place. Were you not talking yonder?'

'Yes,'the child rejoined.

'Of something that has made you sorrowful?'

There was a long pause.

'What was it?' said the schoolmaster, tenderly. 'Come. Tell me what
it was.'

'I rather grieve--I do rather grieve to think,' said the child,
bursting into tears, 'that those who die about us, are so soon
forgotten.'

'And do you think,' said the schoolmaster, marking the glance she had
thrown around, 'that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a faded
flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness or cold neglect? Do you
think there are no deeds, far away from here, in which these dead may
be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there may be people busy in the world,
at this instant, in whose good actions and good thoughts these very
graves--neglected as they look to us--are the chief instruments.'

'Tell me no more,' said the child quickly. 'Tell me no more. I feel,
I know it. How could I be unmindful of it, when I thought of you?'

'There is nothing,' cried her friend, 'no, nothing innocent or good,
that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An
infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the
better thoughts of those who loved it, and will play its part, through
them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt
to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to
the Host of Heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that
loved it here. Forgotten! oh, if the good deeds of human creatures
could be traced to their sourc