Something of that deep, unconscious spirit of prophecy, which sometimes haunts the souls of children God-loving like Mary Fuller, whispered her that this separation would be for years. She had reasoned with this presentiment all the way from the Alms House, which had so lately been their home, to this the place of their future residence. In the innocence of her heart she had taxed this feeling as a selfish one, and had covered herself with self-reproach, for having fallen into envy of the brighter destiny which awaited Isabel, in comparison with her own prospects. But the child had done herself injustice, and mistook the holiest intuition of a pure heart for a feeling of which that heart was incapable. Isabel merely knew that they were to be parted, that the young creature whose care had been that of a mother, whose patience and gentle love had given a home feeling even to the Alms House, would no longer share her room, curl her hair, and arrange her dress with kindly devotion, or in any way soothe her life as she had done. She did not comprehend, as Mary did, the great evil which this separation would bring upon her moral nature; but her affectionate heart was touched, and the passionate grief that she felt at parting, was more violent by far than the deeper and more solemn feeling that shook Mary's heart to the centre, but made no violent outcry, as lighter grief might have done. Both Salina and Mary herself had done the child injustice, when they supposed her going heartlessly away from her old companion. Confused by the meeting of Mrs. Farnham and the housekeeper, and puzzled by the strangeness of everything around, she had followed her benefactress, or adopted mother, without a thought that Mary would not join them; and her grief was violent, indeed, when she learned that then and there she must separate from the only creature on earth, that her warm, young heart could entirely love. The children were locked in each other's arms, weeping, each striving to comfort the other. "Remember now, Isabel, say your prayers every night, the Lord's Prayer, and after that, Isabel, remember and ask God to bless me and make me, oh! so patient." "Ah! but it will seem so lonesome all by myself, with no one to kneel by me. Mary, Mary, I wish they had left us together at the hospital, I long to get away from here!" "No, you mustn't feel that way, Mary, because Mrs. Farnham is very good and very kind, to make you like her own child, and dress you up in all these pretty things." "They are pretty!" replied Mary, examining her plaid silk dress through many tears, "but somehow I don't seem to feel a bit happier in them." "But this lady is to be your mother, Isabel." Poor Isabel burst into a fresh passion of grief. "Oh! Mary, Mary, that is it. You know she isn't in the least like my mother, my own darling, darling mother."