"Yes, I'm alive; though, if I'd staid into the river, I wouldn't have been, Dora says," replied Sunshine quietly. "Oh! but the Lord in heaven look down on us this day, and keep me from going downright mad with the joy that's breaking my heart! Is it yourself it is, O little sister! is it yourself that's in it, and I alive to see it?" He was at her feet now, his white face all bathed with tears, his trembling fingers timidly clasping her robe, his eyes raised imploringly to those serenely bent upon him. "I knew you once and you was good to me," said the child musingly; "but I got tired when I danced so much in the street. I don't ever dance now, only with Argus." "But, little sister, are you just sure, it's yourself alive? And don't you mind I was Teddy, and we used to go walking in the Gardens and on the Commons; and there was the good mammy at home that used to rock you on her lap, and warm the pretty little feet in her hands, and sing to you till you dropped asleep? Don't you mind them things, Cherry darling?" The child looked attentively in his face while he thus spoke, and at the end nodded several times; while a light, like that of earliest dawn, began to glimmer in her eyes. "Tell me some more," said she briefly. "And do you mind the picture-books I used to bring you home, and the story of the Cock Robin you used to like so well to hear, and the skip-jack you played with, and the big doll that mammy made for you, and you called it Susan?"-- "O--h! Susan!" cried the child suddenly, and then stood all pale and trembling, while her earnest eyes seemed searching in the past for some dimly-remembered secret, which to lose was agony, to recall impossible. "Susan!" said she softly again. "Yes, there was Susan, somewhere, and--Oh! tell me the rest, tell me who it was that loved me so!" "Sure, it was Teddy loved you best of all," said the boy longingly: for, though her eager eyes dwelt upon his face, it was not for him or his that the depths of her heart were stirring; and, with the old thrill of jealous pain, he felt it so. But then from the remorse and bitterness of the fault he had never ceased to mourn rose a nobler purpose, a higher love. He took the child in his arms, and kissed her tenderly, then released her, saying,-- "Good-by, little sister; for I never will call you so again, and you never more will call me brother. It's your own lady-mother, darling, that you're missing and mourning,--the own beautiful mother that lost you two years ago, and has gone to heaven's gates looking for you, and never would have come back if you had not been found. It's your own home, darling, that you have remembered for heaven; and it's waiting for you, with father and mother, and joy and plenty, all ready to receive you the minute you can get there."