Chapter II

It was spring time, and the joyous birds sung their cheerful notes upon the blossoming trees. The flowers were blooming upon the hill side, and Nature was assuming her verdant robes.

Under the influence of the mild, balmy air of the spring, Mary Grant seemed to revive. Her strength appeared to return with the opening buds, and her friends dared to hope that she might be spared to behold the profusion of another summer, the glories of another autumn. But the disease was deceptive. While hope smiles, the destroyer comes.

The physician, after giving the parents of Mary all the encouragement he could, directed his patient to ride out as often as the weather would permit.

The invalid was happy in the privilege of once more inhaling the balmy breezes, of once again visiting the cherished scenes, where, in the full vigor of health and joy, she had gayly and thoughtlessly roamed.

The village cemetery had always been a hallowed and beautiful spot to her, and she expressed a desire to visit it again, ere her inanimate form should be laid away to slumber beneath its peaceful bosom.

With Mabel for her companion, the carriage was slowly driven through the garden of graves. Mary was silent and thoughtful; and more than once a tear rose to the eye of Mabel, when she thought how soon she might be called upon to follow the cold form of the loved one to her resting-place.

The invalid was thoughtful, but not gloomy. Already the spirit had reached forward to the glories of that better world where there is no death, no sorrow. The grave had no terrors to her; it was a place of rest. Death was not a hideous, quaking skeleton to her imagination, but a white-winged angel, who would fold her upon his bosom, and bear her across the dark valley to the “house with many mansions, eternal in the heavens.”

With introverted thoughts she gazed upon the memorials of the slumbering dead. The funereal fir, the pendent willow that swept over the green graves, diffused a heavenly calm in her heart, and she felt ready to join the great company that slept beneath them.

“There is a new-made grave,” said she, as the carriage turned the angle of one of the avenues.

“It is the grave of poor Ellen Lawson,” replied Mabel.

Mary requested the driver to stop.

On the grave, over which no marble had yet been reared, were several bouquets of fresh flowers. Some little white blossoms, which had been transplanted near the head, were opening their tiny buds.

“Still remembered, Mabel,” said Mary, as she pointed to the flowers.

“They place fresh flowers upon her grave every day.”

“And do you think they did not love her, Mabel?”

“O, sister, I know they did.”

“And wore no black at her funeral?”

“I was wrong, Mary.”

“These are meet emblems of the heart’s remembrance. When I go hence, may the flowers of spring blossom upon my grave. May some loving hand place flowers upon the sod that hides me from those I loved on earth.”

“You are sad, sister; do not speak so gloomily.”

“Nay, Mabel, I am not sad; I am happy.”

Mabel shed a flood of tears upon the bosom of her sister.

“Do not weep, Mabel; we shall meet in heaven, and be happy there forever.”

“You are better, dear sister; do not speak so hopelessly.”

“Only a little while longer, and I shall rest beneath this sod. But do not be sad; I am happy: I am not afraid to die. I feel as though the angels were with me now, waiting to bear me to my home in the skies.”

Mabel cast another glance at the flower-decked grave of Ellen Lawson, as the carriage drove on, and she felt that the heart could more eloquently express its remembrance of the loved and lost, than by a display of the sable weeds of the mourner.