I know how it happened, too. It came of eating sausages. Mrs. Rosenberg,
after she was fairly awake, felt so uncomfortable and oppressed that she
went up stairs to see if the children were safe. Really, I do suppose
those little human souls were precious to her, after all.

There lay Mandoline and Dotty side by side on the buffalo skins; and the
Jewish mother stood in her short night-dress, with a tallow candle in
her hand, and gazed at them tenderly. That horrible dream had stirred
the fountain of love in her heart They made a beautiful picture, and
there was no stain of evil in their young faces. It seems as if the
angel of Sleep flies away with loads of naughtiness, for he always
leaves sleeping children looking very innocent. But, alas! he brings
back next morning all he carried away, for the little ones wake up with
just as bad hearts as ever.

"What sweet little creeters!" said Mrs. Rosenberg, bending over and
kissing them both; "just like seraphims right out of the clouds."

Softly, madam! If a drop of tallow should fall on them from that candle,
they might take to themselves wings and fly away. That was what Cupid did
in the fairy story, and you are in fairy-land yourself, Mrs. Rosenberg;
you are still half asleep.

She looked at Mandoline's perfect little hand, lying outside the
patchwork quilt.

"It doesn't seem, now," murmured the mother, with a tear in her eye,
"that I could ever whack them pretty fingers with a thimble. I do believe
if I wasn't pestered to death with everything under the sun to do, I
might be kind o' half-way decent."