CHAPTER X. DORA’S DIARY. “It seems to me a year since I last wrote, and yet ’tis only three short weeks. But in that time so much has happened that I scarcely can realize it at all. Morrisville was very lonely after the doctor left, and but for that wild Jessie, who keeps one so constantly stirred up, I could hardly have borne the loneliness. She is so full of life, and she has made me laugh so much as she described her father’s conversion to homœopathy, and then went off into ecstasies over Dr. West. “But there came a day when even the gleeful Jessie’s laugh was hushed, and her merry eyes were dim with tears, as she helped me array a little crippled form for the grave. Robin is dead! I can write about it now, can speak of the darling composedly, but at first the thought of him brought a great choking sob, and I could only weep, so fast he grew in my love during the few days I watched over him. He was worse I heard, and in spite of Mattie’s assertion that I was not able to endure it, I went to see him. Nor was I sorry when I met the look of love which beamed in his soft blue eyes, as folding his arms around my neck, he said: “‘I knew you’d come, for I asked God would He send you to little Robin, and He did. You’ll stay, too, won’t you, till Robin’s dead? and you’ll tell me again of my mother in heaven?’ “I might not have stayed with him to the last, but for a dream I had that night, in which Anna came to me, her robes all white and pure as are the robes of the redeemed, a halo of glory round her head, and a look of love in her eyes as she bent over me and said: “‘There’s a little harp in heaven waiting for my boy, and ere many days his baby hands will sweep its golden strings; but till that time arrives, he wants you, Dora Freeman,—wants you to lead him down into the river, across whose waters I shall wait to meet him. For Richard’s sake, you’ll go.’ “The beautiful vision faded from my view, and I awoke from what seemed more reality than a dream. “‘Not for Richard’s sake,’ I said, ‘but for Anna’s;’ and so next day I went again to where the little sick boy lay, watching and waiting for me. “‘I don’t call him Papa Richard now,’ he said, when my wrappings were removed, and I sat down beside him. ‘I told him what you said, that he was not my father, and he told me, “No, Robin, I am not,” but he wouldn’t say where papa was. Do you know, lady, is he in heaven, too?’ “I could not tell, and I tried to divert his mind into some other channel, getting him to speak of Richard, and, vain girl that I was, laying ingenious snares for ascertaining if Richard had mentioned me when he was home.