From my mother’s lips there broke another cry—not like that which I had heard when they told her I must die—but a cry of joy, and then she fell fainting in my father’s arms. I never doubted her love for me again, but in bitterness of spirit, I have many a time wept that I ever distrusted her, my blessed mother. The fourth day after the crisis I was alone with Lizzie, whom, for a long time, I importuned to give me a mirror that I might see myself once more. Yielding at length to my entreaties, she handed me a small looking glass, a wedding gift to my grandmother, and with the consoling remark, that “I wouldn’t always look so,” awaited the result. I am older than I was then, but even now I cannot repress a smile as I bring before my mind the shorn head, the wasted face with high cheek-bones, and the big blue eyes, in which there was a look of “crazy Sal,” which met my view. With the angry exclamation, “They’ll hate me worse than ever, I’m so ugly,” I dashed the mirror upon the floor, breaking it in a thousand pieces. Lizzie knew what I meant, and twining her arms about my neck, she said, “Don’t talk so, Rosa; we love you dearly, and it almost killed us when we thought you couldn’t live. You know big men never cry, and pa the least of all. Why, he didn’t shed a tear when lit”—— Here she stopped suddenly, as if on a forbidden subject, but soon resuming the conversation, she continued, “But the day Dr. Lamb was here and told us you would die, he was out under the cherry tree by our play-house, and when Carrie asked him if you’d never play there any more, he didn’t answer, but turned his face towards the barn, and cried so hard and so loud, that grandma came out and pitied him, smoothing his hair just like he was a little boy. Brother Charlie, too, lay right down in the grass, and said he’d give everything he’d got if he’d never called you ‘bung-eyed,’ nor made fun of you, for he loved you best of all. Then there was poor Jamie kept calling for ‘Yosa’”—— Here Lizzie broke down entirely, saying, “I can’t tell you any more, don’t ask me.” Suddenly it occurred to me that I had neither seen nor heard little Jamie, the youngest of us all, the pet and darling of our household. Rapidly my thoughts traversed the past, and in a moment I saw it all. “Jamie was dead.” I did not need that Lizzie should tell me so. I knew it was true, and when the first great shock was over, I questioned her of his death, how and when it occurred. It seems that I was at first taken with scarlet fever, which soon assumed another form, but not until it had communicated itself to Jamie, who, after a few days’ suffering, had died. I had ever been his favorite, and to the last he had called for me to come; my grandmother, with the superstition natural to her age, construing it into an omen that I was soon to follow him.