knew not. Her promise to give her child food, on the next day, was
made only to silence his call for bread. There was no prospect of
receiving any money, and she could not see her children starve. But
one recourse was left. She must sell the bed--the last piece of
furniture remaining in the room--no matter that in so doing her
wretchedness increased instead of diminished.

The child was not satisfied with her promise. The pangs he endured
were too much for one of his age, and again he uttered his call for
bread.

"There is no bread, Willy," said Eva, speaking for the first time.
"Don't ask for any bread. It makes mamma sad."

The child opened his large blue eyes enquiringly upon his sister.

"My sweet, darling child," exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, clasping the
little Ella to her heart, and then bursting into tears at this proof
of her child's fortitude, she continued: "Are you not hungry, too?"

"Yes, mother," she replied, "but"--Here the little girl ceased to
speak as if desirous of sparing her mother pain.

"But what?" asked Mrs. Wentworth.

"Mother," exclaimed the child, throwing her arms round her mother's
neck, and evading the question, "father will come back to us, and then
we will not want bread."

The word "father," brought to Mrs. Wentworth's mind her absent