"'Tisn't _his_ journey that'll be the hardest and stormiest, I'm thinking," added Tom, "'tis those he'll leave behind.
Who is going to break it to his mother?
She doesn't seem to see it for herself--though how she can help it is past my understanding." Poor Miss Patch's hands shook, and her tears fell faster.

"I can't, I can't," she murmured, "but yet--I suppose I ought--there's nobody else to do it." It was Charlie himself, though, who saved her that pain.

"Mother," he said one evening, when she came to get him ready for the night, "would you be very unhappy if I went away from you ?" "What do you mean ?" she cried, in sudden fear.

"You--you--" "Would you, mother ?" he persisted.
"Be unhappy! Why, I should break my heart--you are all I have to care for, or live for, or--" He put his little wasted arm about her neck, and drew her frightened face down to his.

"Mother, when I go away you will know I am happy-- but Jessie has gone away from her poor old granp and granny, and they don't know--they think she is very unhappy and badly treated, and-- and, mother, I want you to try and get father to let Jessie go back to them again, they must be so dreadfully sad about her.