er.

"Because," said she, "I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your
mamma is very ill."

A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move
in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face,
and it was steady again.

"She is very dangerously ill," she added.

I knew all now.

"She is dead." There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out
into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.

She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone
sometimes; and I cried and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and cried
again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the
oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that
there was no ease for.

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed
upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut
up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had
been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I
thought of my father's grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my
mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well.

I stood upon a chair when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to
see how red my eyes were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after
some hours were gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they
seemed to be, what, in connection with my loss, it would affect me most
to think of when I drew near home--for I was going home to the funeral.
I am sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the
rest of the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.

If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remembered
that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in
the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I saw
them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their
classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked
slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt
it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take
exactly the same notice of them all, as before.

I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy night
coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by country
people traveling short intermediate distances upon the road. We had no
story telling that evening, and Traddl