"Shall I read you your favorite chapter?" I asked, softly; for every
day Dot made us read to him the description of that City with its
golden streets and gem-built walls; but he shook his head,

"It glitters too much for my head to-night," he said, quaintly; "it
is too bright and shining. I would rather think of dear father
walking in those green pastures, with all the good people who have
died. It must be very beautiful there, Esther. But I think father
would be happier if I were with him."

"Oh, Dot, no!" for the bare idea pained me; and I felt I must argue
this notion away. "Allan and I could not spare you, or mother either;
and there's Jack--what would poor Jack do without her playfellow?"

"I don't feel I shall ever play again," said Dot, leaning his chin
on his mites of hands and peering at us in his shrewd way. "Jack is a
girl, and she cannot understand; but when one is only a Dot, and has
an ugly crutch and a back that never leaves off aching, and a father
that has gone to heaven, one does not care to be left behind."

"But you are not thinking of us, Dot, and how unhappy it would make
us to lose you too," I returned. And now the tears would come one by
one; Dot saw them, and wiped them off with his sleeve.

"Don't be silly, Esther," he said, in a coaxing little voice. "I am
not going yet. Allan says I may live to be a man. He said so last
night; and then he told me he was afraid we should be very poor; and
that made me sorry, for I knew I should never be able to work, with
my poor back."