Then she told some garbled story of a kind-eyed Saviour’s love, How He’d built for little children great big playgrounds up above, Where they sang and played at hop-scotch, and at horses all the day, And where beadles and policemen never frightened them away. This was Nell’s idea of Heaven――just a bit of what she’d heard, With a little bit invented and a little bit inferred. But her brother lay and listened, and he seemed to understand, For he closed his eyes and murmured he could see the Promised Land. “Yes,” he whispered, “I can see it――I can see it, sister Nell; Oh, the children look so happy, and they’re all so strong and well; I can see them there with Jesus――He is playing with them, too! Let us run away and join them, if there’s room for me and you.” She was eight, this little maiden, and her life had all been spent In the garret and the alley, where they starved to pay the rent; Where a drunken father’s curses and a drunken mother’s blows Drove her forth into the gutter from the day’s dawn to its close. But she knew enough, this outcast, just to tell the sinking boy, “You must die before you’re able all these blessings to enjoy. You must die,” she whispered, “Billy, and I am not even ill; But I’ll come to you, dear brother――yes, I promise that I will. “You are dying, little brother,――you are dying, oh, so fast; I heard father say to mother that he knew you could’nt last. They will put you in a coffin, then you’ll wake and be up there, While I’m left alone to suffer in this garret bleak and bare.” “Yes, I know it,” answered Billy. “Ah, but, sister, I don’t mind, Gentle Jesus will not beat me; He’s not cruel or unkind. But I can’t help thinking, Nelly, I should like to take away Something, sister, that you gave me, I might look at every day. “In the summer you remember how the mission took us out To a great green lovely meadow, where we played and ran about, And the van that took us halted by a sweet bright patch of land, Where the fine red blossoms grew, dear, half as big as mother’s hand. “Nell, I asked the good kind teacher what they called such flowers as those, And he told me, I remember, that the pretty name was rose. I have never seen them since, dear――how I wish that I had one! Just to keep and think of you, Nell, when I’m up beyond the sun.” Not a word said little Nelly; but at night when Billy slept, On she flung her scanty garments, and then down the stairs she crept. Through the silent streets of London she ran nimbly as a fawn, Running on and running ever till the night had changed to dawn. When the foggy sun had risen, and the mist had cleared away, All around her, wrapped in snowdrift, there the open country lay. She was tired, her limbs were frozen, and the roads had cut her feet, But there came no flowery gardens her poor tearful eyes to greet.