her face still wore an expression of inconsolable grief. She was silent
a few moments, and then she told Mrs. Stein that she meant to take Nora
home and lay her beside the little boy in the garden by the Rhine, and
that she should send to her true friend and house-keeper Clarissa to
come at once to Oak-ridge to make the preparations for their return, and
accompany her on her painful journey. This arrangement was a great
relief to Mrs. Stein, who returned home with an easier mind, and
hastened to impart this bit of good news to her sister. But aunty was
nowhere to be found, and Emma, who was sitting alone in an unusually
subdued mood, told her mother that she was probably with Fred, who had
been looking for her, "to show her a beetle or some such thing," she
supposed! So Mrs. Stein sat down with her little girl, who wanted to ask
her questions about Nora. Emma longed to hear that Nora had not suffered
from her neglect, and had been contented and happy without her; for she
had been feeling more and more how selfish she had been in never
repeating her first visit, merely because she had not herself enjoyed
it, never thinking what she might have done for poor sick Nora.

Fred had sought his aunt for a long time, and when he found her he
carried her off to a remote part of the garden, where stood a lonely
summer-house. There he drew her down beside him on a bench, and said he
had something to say to her alone.

"Do you know, aunty, I saw Nora to-day, and she is dead; and I cannot
see how she can come to life again, and go to heaven."

"You cannot understand that, Fred? Neither can I. But the good God does
many things which we cannot understand, and yet we know they are. And as
we are told by One whom we can trust that we shall live again after our
body dies, we must believe it. I believe it, Fred, with all my heart."