_Mrs. G_. Do not sing, Annie.

_Annie_. Crying would better befit the times, I know,--Dear mother, what
is this?

_Mrs. G_. Hush,--asleep--is she?

_Annie_. This hour, and quiet as an infant. Need enough there was of it
too. See, what a perfect damask mother!

_Mrs. G_. Draw the curtain on that sunshine there. This sleep has
flushed her. Ay, a painter might have dropped that golden hair,--yet
this delicate beauty is but the martyr's wreath now, with its fine nerve
and shrinking helplessness. No, Annie; put away your hat, my love,--you
cannot go to the lodge to-night.

_Annie_. Mother?

_Mrs. G_. You cannot go to the glen to-night. This is no time for idle
pleasure, God knows.

_Annie_. Why, you have been weeping in earnest, and your cheek is
pale.--And now I know where that sad appointment led you. Is it over?
That it should be in our humanity to bear, what in our ease we cannot,
_cannot_ think of!

_Mrs. G_. Harder things for humanity are there than bodily anguish,
sharp though it be. It was not the boy,--the mother's anguish, I wept
for, Annie.