hange, even in a much
worse man than Tom. For there is the Life itself, all-surrounding, and
ever pressing in upon the human soul, wherever that soul will afford a
chink of entrance; and Tom had not yet sealed up all his doors.

When he lay there dead--for what excuse could we have for foolish
lamentation, if we did not speak of the loved as _lying dead?_--Letty
had him already enshrined in her heart as the best of husbands--as her
own Tom, who had never said a hard word to her--as the cleverest as
well as kindest of men who had written poetry that would never die
while the English language was spoken. Nor did "The Firefly" spare its
dole of homage to the memory of one of its gayest writers. Indeed, all
about its office had loved him, each after his faculty. Even the boy
cried when he heard he was gone, for to him too he had always given a
kind word, coming and going. A certain little runnel of verse flowed no
more through the pages of "The Firefly," and in a month there was not
the shadow of Tom upon his age. But the print of him was deep in the
heart of Letty, and not shallow in the affection of Mary; nor were such
as these, insignificant records for any one to leave behind him, as
records go. Happy was he to have left behind him any love, especially
such a love as Letty bore him! For what is the loudest praise of
posterity to the quietest love of one's own generation? For his mother,
her memory was mostly in her temper. She had never understood her
wayward child, just because she had given him her waywardness, and not
parted with it herself, so that between them the two made havoc of
love. But she who gives her child all he desires, in the hope of thus
binding his love to herself, no less than she who thwarts him in
everything, may rest assured of the neglect she has richly earned. When
she heard of his death, she howled and cursed her fate, and the woman,
meaning poor Letty, who had parted her and her Tom, swearing she would
never set eyes upon her, never let her touch a farthing of Tom's money.
She would not hear of paying his debts until Mary told her she then
would, upon which the fear of public disapprobation wrought for right
if not righteousness.

But what was Mary to do now with Letty? She was little more than a baby
yet, not silly from youth, but young from silliness. Children must
learn to walk, but not by being turned out alone in Cheapside.

She was relieved from some perplexity for the present, however