"My cousin Minnie. She's goin' to be buried in God's Acre, an' I'm
invited 'cause I'm a r'lation. She married a sporting gentleman named
Hines an' she died yesterday," said the precocious Orphan.

So Minnie Munn, pretty, blithe, life-loving Minnie, whose going had hurt
us so, had come back to Our Square, with all her love of life quenched.
She had promised that she would come back, in the little, hysterical,
defiant note she left under the door. Her father and mother must wait
and not worry. There are thousands of homes, I suppose, in which are
buried just such letters as Minnie's farewell to her parents;
rebellious, passionate, yearning, pitiful. Ah, well! The moth must break
its chrysalis. The flower must rend its bonds toward the light. Little
Minnie was "going on the stage." A garish and perilous stage it was,
whereon Innocence plays a part as sorry as it is brief. And now she was
making her exit, without applause. Memory brought back a picture of
Minnie as I had first seen her, a wee thing, blinking and smiling in the
arms of her Madonna-faced mother, on a bench in Our Square, and the
mother (who could not wait for the promised return--she has lain in
God's Acre these three years) crooning to her an unforgettable song,
mournfully prophetic:

"Why did I bring thee, Sweet
Into a world of sin?--
Into a world of wonder and doubt
With sorrows and snares for the little white feet--
Into a world whence the going out
Is as dark as the coming in!"

Old lips readily lend themselves to memory; I suppose I must have
repeated the final lines aloud, for the pink man said, wearily