He knew better than most children of his age what was meant by
death, and as he lay awake, thinking how dreadful it was to have no
mother, his thoughts turned toward his father, who had that day been
too much absorbed in his own grief to notice him.
"Maybe he'll love me some now ma is dead," he thought, and with that
yearning for paternal sympathy natural to the motherless, he crept
out of bed, and groping his way with his noiseless crutches to his
father's door, he knocked softly for admittance.
"Who's there?" demanded Dr. Kennedy, every, nerve thrilling to the
answer.
"It's me, father; won't you let me in, for its dark out here, and
lonesome, with her lying in the parlor. Oh, father, won't you love
me a little, now mother's dead? I can't help it because I'm lame,
and when I'm a man I will earn my own living. I won't be in the way.
Say, pa, will you love me?"
He remembered the charges his father had preferred against him, and
the father remembered them too. She to whom the cruel words were
spoken was gone from him now and her child, their child, was at the
door, pleading for his love. Could he refuse? No, by every kindly
feeling, by every parental tie, we answer, No; he could not; and
opening the door he took the little fellow in his arms, hugging him
to his bosom, while tears, the first he had shed for many a year,
fell like rain upon the face of his crippled boy. Like some mighty
water, which breaking through its prison walls seeks again its
natural channel, so did his love go out toward the child so long
neglected, the child who was not now to him a cripple. He did not
think of the deformity, he did not even see it. He saw only the
beautiful face, the soft brown eyes and silken hair of the little
one, who ere long fell asleep, murmuring in his dreams, "He loves
me, ma, he does."
Surely the father cannot be blamed if, when he looked again upon the
calm face of the dead, he fancied that it wore a happier look, as if
the whispered words of Louis had reached her unconscious ear. Very
beautiful looked Matty in her coffin--for thirty years had but
slightly marred her youthful face, and the doctor, as he gazed upon
her, thought within himself, "she was almost as fair as Maude
Glendower."
Then, as his eye fell upon the rosebud which Janet had laid upon her
bosom, he said, "'Twas kind in Mrs. Blodgett to place it there, for
Matty was fond of flowers;" but he did not dream how closely was
that rosebud connected with a grave made many years before.