This was said with a little laugh, though her eyes were not laughing; but when she saw the serious look her mother cast upon her, she got up hastily and threw herself down, weak as she was, at the old woman’s knee. “Don’t you think if we were to live both as long as we could and then to die both together!” cried the changeable girl, with a sudden sob. “Oh, mamma, why didn’t you have me when you were young, when you had Florry, that we might have lived ever so long, ever so long together? Would it be wrong for me to die when you die? why should it be wrong? God would know what we meant by it. He would know it wasn’t for wickedness. And it would make your mind easy whatever should happen,” cried the child, burying her pretty face in her mother’s lap. Thus the two desolate creatures clung together, the old woman yearning to live, the young creature quite ready at any word of command that might reach her to give up her short existence. They had nobody in the world belonging to them that they knew of, and in the course of nature their companionship could only be so short, so short! And it was not as if God saw only the outside like men. He would know what they meant by it; that was what poor little Pamela thought. But she was as lively as a little bird half an hour after, being a creature of a variable mind. Not a magnificent little princess, self-possessed and reflective, like Sara over the way--a little soul full of fancies, and passions, and sudden impulses of every kind--a kitten for fun, a heroine for any thing tragic, such as she, not feared, but hoped, might perhaps fall in her way. And the mother, who understood the passion, did not know very much about either the fun or the fancy, and was puzzled by times, and even vexed when she had no need to be vexed. Mrs. Preston was greatly perplexed even that night after this embrace and the wild suggestion that accompanied it to see how swiftly and fully Pamela’s light heart came back to her. She could not comprehend such a proposal of despair; but how the despair should suddenly flit off and leave the sweetest fair skies of delight and hope below was more than the poor woman could understand. However, the fact was that hope and despair were quite capable of living next door in Pamela’s fully occupied mind, and that despair itself was but another kind of hope when it got into those soft quarters where the air was full of the chirping of birds and the odors of the spring. She could not sing, to call singing, but yet she went on singing all the evening long over her bits of work, and planned drives in Mr. Swayne’s spring-cart, and even in the carrier’s wagon, much more joyfully than Sara ever anticipated the use of her grays. Yet she had but one life, one worn existence, old and shattered by much suffering, between her and utter solitude and destitution. No wonder her mother looked at her with silent wonder, she who could never get this woful possibility out of her mind. CHAPTER X.