“You must be good,” she said, “or you would never have left your beautiful home and your friends and attached yourself to me, who am only a drag upon you. But sometime in the future you will be rewarded; and, forgive me, Miss Belknap, if I speak out plain, now, like one who stands close down to the river of death, and, looking back, can see what probably will be. I do not know how you feel toward Theo, but of this I am sure, he has never taken another into the place you once filled, and at a suitable time after I am gone he will repeat the words he said to you years ago, and if he does, don’t send him away a second time. He is nearer to your standard now than he was then. He is growing all the time in the estimation of his fellow-men. They are going to make him a D. D., and the parish of which he is pastor is one of the best and most highly cultivated in Boston. And you will go there, I hope, and be a mother to my children, and bring them up like you, for that will please Theo better than my homely ways. Trix is like you now, and Bunchie will learn, though she is slower to imitate. You will be happy with Theo,—and I am glad for him and the children; but you will not let them forget me quite, but will tell them sometimes of their mother, who loved them so much. I hoped to see Theo once more before I died, but something tells me he will not be here in time; that when he comes I shall be dead. So you will ask him to forget the many times I worried and fretted him with my petty cares and troubles. Tell him that Mollie puts her arms around his neck and lays her poor head, which will never ache again, against his good, kind heart, and so bids him good-by, and goes away alone into the brightness beyond, for it is all bright and peaceful; and just over the river I am crossing I seem to see the distant towers of ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ gleaming in the heavenly sunshine, which lies so warm upon the everlasting hills. And my babies are there waiting and watching for me. Sing, can’t you, ‘Will some one be at the beautiful gate, waiting and watching for me?’” There was too heavy a sorrow in Beatrice’s heart, and her voice was too full of tears for her to sing to the dying woman, who clung so closely to her. But what _she_ could not do, little Trixey did for her. She had entered the room unobserved, followed by Bunchie, whose hands were full of the sweet wild-flowers they had gathered and brought to their mother, who was past caring for such things now. The yellow jessamine and wild honeysuckle lay unheeded upon her pillow, but at the sound of her children’s voices a spasm of intense pain passed for a moment over her face, and was succeeded by a smile of peace as she whispered again: “Somebody sing of the beautiful gate,” and instantly Trixey’s clear voice rang through the room, mingled with little Bunchie’s lisping, broken notes, as she, too, struck in and sang: