“Yes, my darling, she is better now,” said Roma in a broken voice as she took the hand of Owlet to lead her away. But the child was now gazing in terror at the face of death. She snatched her hand from Roma’s clasp and flung herself upon the dead bosom, crying: “Mamma! mamma! Oh, mamma! What is the matter now? What makes you look so? Oh, ma’am, what is the matter with my mamma? Why don’t she speak to me?” Roma lifted the child in her arms, sat down on the sofa, held her to her heart, and said: “Your mamma is better, my darling—better than she ever was in all her life before. God has taken her now, and made her well.” “No, He hasn’t! There she is, and something awful is the matter with her! Oh! let me go to my poor mamma!” sobbed the child, struggling to get out of the arms of her friend. Roma would not coerce her; she let her go. And Owlet rushed back to the side of the dead, and began to kiss and hug and cry and call, without meeting any response. “Oh! why don’t she answer? Oh! why don’t my own mamma speak to me?” wailed the child, looking up to her friend for an explanation. “She does not answer you, my child, because she is not here.” “Why, there she is!” cried Owlet, pointing with tearful persistence to the lifeless form in the chair. “No, darling, that is not your mamma. If it were, she would answer and caress you; but it is only the body she lived in when she was with us. But the body was poor and weak and sick and suffering, and the Lord drew her out of it and took her to a better place. Listen, darling. Your mamma is alive and well now. She is not sick any more. If my body was to be weak and sick, and more torment to me than use to anybody, the Lord would take me out of it to a better place, and make me well. Our bodies are not ourselves—they are only the things we live in; they are no more ourselves than our gloves are our hands, or our shoes are our feet. Do you understand, dear? Your mamma is not here in that body; she is well and happy in a better place. You understand?” “Oh, yes, but I want my mamma. Oh, I want my own mamma!” the child wailed, and would not be comforted. Roma held her again in her arms, and kissed and embraced her, and wished with all her heart that some one would come into the room. Some one presently came. It was the doctor, on his daily visit. “It is all over,” she said in a low tone as she pointed to the dead. “As I have been expecting to find it daily for the last week,” the physician replied. Then: “How long since?” he inquired. “About half an hour, doctor. I am here alone with this child, and cannot leave her. Will you kindly see the proper people and send them here for the last offices? Some woman, of course, must be on hand. Please, also, see Mrs. Brown, our janitress. I must engage a large room on this flat. There are plenty of vacant rooms in the house now, since the exodus of the fourth of March. Will you kindly attend to these matters?”