"My pretty boy," she said caressingly, "I am so sorry! I fear you are disappointed. I think we might have had them. You were always promised a birthday party, you know, when you should be seven years old." There had been some discussion about it. My mother thought the little boys and girls might come; but papa and Leah said, "No--it would fatigue her." "I don't mind a bit, mamma," I answered. "I have my book, and it is so pretty. They can come next year, you know, when you are well again." She sighed deeply. Getting up from the sofa, she took up two books that were on the stand behind her, and sat down again. Early in the spring some illness had seized her that I did not understand. She ought to have been well again by this time, but was not so. She left her room and came downstairs, and saw friends when they called: but instead of growing stronger she grew weaker. "She was never robust, and it has been too much for her," I overheard Leah say to one of the other servants, in allusion to the illness. "What if I should not be here at your next birthday, Charley?" she asked sadly, holding me to her side as she sat. "But where should you be, mamma?" "Well, my child, I think--sometimes I think--that by that time I may be in heaven." I felt suddenly seized with a sort of shivering. I neither spoke nor cried; at seven years old many a child only imperfectly realizes the full meaning of anything like this. My eyes became misty. "Don't cry, Charley. All that God does must be for the best, you know: and heaven is a better world than this." "Oh, mamma, you must get well; you must!" I cried, words and tears bursting forth together. "Won't you come out, and grow strong in the sunshine? See how warm and bright it is! Look at the flowers in the grass!" "Ay, dear; it is all very bright and warm and beautiful," she said, looking across the garden to the field beyond it. "The grass is growing long, and the buttercups and cowslips and blue-bells are all there. Soon they will be cut down and the field will be bare. Next year the grass and the flowers will spring up again, Charlie: but we, once we are taken, will spring up no more in this world: only in heaven." "But don't you think you _will_ get well, mamma? Can't you _try_ to?" "Well, dear--yes, I will try to do so. I _have_ tried. I am trying every day, Charley, for I should not like to go away and leave my little boy." With a long sigh, that it seemed to me I often heard from her now, she lay for a moment with her head on the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. Then she sat forward again, and took up one of the books. "I meant to give you a little book to-day, Charley, as well as papa. Look, it is called 'Sintram.' A lady gave it me when I was twelve years old; and I have always liked it. You are too young to understand it yet, but you will do so later."