"Who has hurt him ?" she cried, turning to her grandmother almost fiercely.

"Who has done anything to granp--and you ?" she added, when she caught sight of her grandmother's face.
Patience Dawson's hand slipped from her husband's shoulder down to Jessie's, and crept caressingly round the little girl's neck, while the old man threw his arm around her to draw her nearer to him.
"'Tis your mother, child," cried Patience, her words seeming to tumble from her anyhow.

"She's dead! Our only child, and took from us for ever, and never knowing how much we loved and forgave her, and how we've hungered night and day for a sight of her--and now I shall never, never see her again!" and then poor Patience broke down, and kneeling beside her husband and grandchild, bowed her head on the table and wept uncontrollably.
At the sight of their trouble Jessie's own tears fell fast.
"Mother," she cried, scarcely grasping the real state of the case, and all it meant to her.

"Mother! dead?
Granp, mother isn't really dead, is she?
Won't I--won't I never see her any more," the truth gradually forcing itself on her mind--"won't she ever come and live here with us, and see my rose--and--and all the things I've been saving for her ?" Her little face was white now, and her lips quivering with the pain of realization.
Her grandfather shook his head.

"She won't ever come to us; never, never no more," he sighed heavily.