"Poor child! she will feel this sorely." The admonition was quite superfluous; Dick was already hastening to her.
Another moment and she was weening out her sorrow and anxiety on his shoulder.
"O Dick," she sobbed, "I'm afraid I can never speak to her again, and--and my last words to her, just before she went, were a reproach.

I said I'd never ask her for sympathy again; and now I never can.

Oh isn't it dreadful, dreadful!" and she wept as if her very heart would break.
"Oh, don't, Molly!" he said hoarsely, pressing her closer to him and mingling his tears with hers, "who could blame you, you poor suffering thing! and I'm sure you must have been provoked to it.

She hadn't been saying anything kind to you ?" Molly shook her head with a fresh burst of grief.

"No, oh no! oh, if we'd parted like Cousin Elsie and her children always do!--with kind, loving words and caresses." "But we're not that sort, you know," returned Dick with an awkward attempt at consolation, "and I'm worse than you, a great deal, for I've talked up to mother many a time and didn't have the same excuse." There was sickness at Pinegrove.