If you go any where, suppose you stop at Mrs.Howard's, and comfort poor Mary, who cries all the time because she and Alice have got to go to the poor-house." "Of course they'll go there, and they orto be thankful they've got so good a place--Get away .-- That ain't my double gown;--that's a cloak.
Don't you know a cloak from a double gown ?" "Yes, yes," said Billy, whose mind was not upon his mother's toilet--"but," he continued, "I want to ask you, can't we,--couldn't you take them for a few days, and perhaps something may turn up." "William Bender," said the highly astonished lady what can you mean?
A poor sick woman like me, with one foot in the grave, take the charge of three pauper children! I shan't do it, and you needn't think of it." "But, mother," persisted Billy, who could generally coax her to do as he liked, "it's only for a few days, and they'll not be much trouble or expense, for I'll work enough harder to make it up." "I have said _no_ once, William Bender, and when _I_ say no, I mean no," was the answer.
Billy knew she would be less decided the next time the subject was broached, so for the present, he dropped it, and taking his cap he returned to Mrs.Howard's, while his mother started for Mrs.
Campbell's.
Next morning between the hours of nine and ten, the tolling bell sent forth its sad summons, and ere long a few of the villagers were moving towards the brown cottage, where in the same plain coffin slept the mother and her only boy.

Near them sat Ella, occasionally looking with childish curiosity at the strangers around her, or leaning forward to peep at the tips of the new morocco shoes which Mrs.Johnson had kindly given her; then, when her eye fell upon the coffin, she would burst into such an agony of weeping that many of the villagers also wept in sympathy, and as they stroked her soft hair, thought, "how much more she loved her mother than did Mary," who, without a tear upon her cheek, sat there immovable, gazing fixedly upon the marble face of her mother.

Alice was not present, for Billy had not only succeeded in winning his mother's consent to take the children for a few days, but he had also coaxed her to say that Alice might come before the funeral, on condition that he would remain at home and take care of her.

This he did willingly, for Alice, who had been accustomed to see him would now go to no one else except Mary.
Billy was rather awkward at baby tending, but by dint of emptying his mother's cupboard, blowing a tin horn, rattling a pewter platter with an iron spoon, and whistling Yankee Doodle, he managed to keep her tolerably quiet until he saw the humble procession approaching the house.

Then, hurrying with his little charge to the open window, he looked out.