"No! Oh I am so glad!" and a bright flash of joy shone forth from the
eyes that were red with weeping. Something cold pushed quietly in
between us, and then gave a sniff and a sigh. It was darling Judy’s
nose. He had learned in the lower regions, where he always dwelled in
my absence, that Miss Clara was come home; and knowing my name as well
as his own, he had set off at once in quest of me. After offering me
his best love and respects, with the tip of his tongue, as he always
did, he looked from one to the other of us, with his eyebrows raised in
surprise, and the deepest sorrow and sympathy in his beautiful
soft-brown pupils. I declare it made us cry more than ever.
"Oh, Clara," sobbed Lily at length, "he did howl so last night. Do you
think he could have known it?"
His eyes dropped, as she was telling me. They always did, when he
thought he had been a bad dog.
"Now go down, Judy; good little Judy, go to Mrs. Fletcher. A great
friend of mine is with her."
Away he trotted obediently, and his tail recovered its flourish before
he had got to the corner.
"Now, darling, let us go there," said the poor child, trembling again.
"I would go anywhere with you."
Hand in hand we walked into my Uncle’s chamber. Young as I was, and
still thoughtless in many ways, twice before now had I gazed on the
solemn face of death; but never, not even in my mother’s holy
countenance, saw I such perfect peace and bliss as dwelt in and seemed
to smile from my dearest Uncle’s lineaments. The life, in youth puffed
here and there by every captious breeze of pride, in its prime becalmed
awhile on the halycon deep of love, then tempest-tossed through the
lonely dark, and shattered of late by blows from God, that life whose
flaw of misanthropy and waste of high abilities had been redeemed,
ennobled even, by a pure and perfect love--now it had bidden farewell to
all below the clouds, calmly, happily, best of all--in faith.
We knelt beside the bed and prayed--Lily as a Catholic, Clara as a
Protestant--that we, and all we loved, might have so blest an end. Then
we both sat peacefully, with a happy awe upon us, in the dark recess
behind the velvet curtains. Two wax candles were burning on the table
towards the door, and by their light the face we loved, looked not wan,
but glorious, as with a silver glory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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