"Why is there this difference?" he thought more than once, as he contrasted the situation, of the two girls,--the one petted, caressed, and surrounded by every luxury, and the other forlorn, desolate, and the inmate of a poor-house; and then he built castles of a future, when, by the labor of his own head or hands, Mary, too, should be rich and happy. CHAPTER XI. ALICE. As spring advanced, Alice began to droop, and Sally's quick eye detected in her infallible signs of decay. But she would not tell it to Mary, whose life now seemed a comparatively happy one. Mr. and Mrs. Parker were kind to her,--the pleasant-looking woman and the girl with crooked feet were kind to her. Uncle Peter petted her, and even Miss Grundy had more than once admitted that "she was about as good as young ones would average." Billy, too, had promised to remain and work for Mr. Parker during the summer, intending with the money thus earned to go the next fall and winter to the Academy in Wilbraham. Jenny was coming back ere long, and Mary's step was light and buoyant as she tripped singing about the house, unmindful of Miss Grundy's oft-expressed wish that "she would stop that clack," or of the anxious, pitying eyes Sal Furbush bent upon her, as day after day the faithful old creature rocked and tended little Alice. "No," said she, "I cannot tell her. She'll have tears enough to shed by and by, but I'll double my diligence, and watch little Willie more closely." So night after night, when Mary was sleeping the deep sleep of childhood, Sally would steal noiselessly to her room, and bending over the little wasting figure at her side, would wipe the cold sweat from her face, and whisper in the unconscious baby's ear messages of love for "the other little Willie, now waiting for her in Heaven." At last Mary could no longer be deceived, and one day when Alice lay gasping in Sally's lap she said, "Aunt Sally isn't Alice growing worse? She doesn't play now, nor try to walk." Sally laid her hand on Mary's face and replied, "Poor child, you'll soon be all alone, for Willie's going to find his mother." There was no outcry,--no sudden gush of tears, but nervously clasping her hands upon her heart, as if the shock had entered there, Mary sat down upon her bed, and burying her face in the pillow, sat there for a long time. But she said nothing, and a careless observer might have thought that she cared nothing, as it became each day more and more evident that Alice was dying. But these knew not of the long nights when with untiring love she sat by her sister's cradle, listening to her irregular breathing, pressing her clammy hands, and praying to be forgiven if ever, in thought or deed, she had wronged the little one now leaving her. And all this time there came no kind word or message of love from Ella, who knew that Alice was dying, for Billy had told her so. "Oh, if she would only come and see her;" said Mary, "it wouldn't seem half so bad."