"My dear!" she said; but the child took no heed. Her voice, however,
seemed to wake something in him. He started to his feet, and rushing
at the beam, began to tug at it with his tiny hands. Mrs. Porson burst
into tears.

"It's no use, darling!" she cried.

"Wake mamma!" he said, turning, and looking up at her.

"She will not wake," sobbed Mrs. Porson.

Her husband stood by speechless, choking back the tears of which,
being an Englishman, he was ashamed.

"She _will_ wake," returned the boy. "She always wakes when I kiss
her."

He knelt beside her, to prove upon her white face the efficacy of the
measure he had never until now known to fail. That he had already
tried it was plain, for he had kissed away much of the dust, though
none of the death. When once more he found that she did not even close
her lips to return his passionate salute, he desisted. With that
saddest of things, a child's sigh, and a look that seemed to Mrs.
Porson to embody the riddle of humanity, he reseated himself on the
beam, with his little feet on his mother's bosom, where so often she
had made them warm. He did not weep; he did not fix his eyes on his
mother; his look was level and moveless and set upon nothing. He
seemed to have before him an utter blank--as if the outer wall of
creation had risen frowning in front, and he knew there was nothing
behind it but chaos.