"
It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of Nature. Long, long ago we
lost our first-born, Prue and I. Since then, we have grown older and
our children with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps, and decay. We
are happy, our children are obedient and gay. But should Prue live
until she has lost us all, and laid us, gray and weary, in our graves,
she will have always one babe in her heart. Every mother who has lost
an infant, has gained a child of immortal youth. Can you find comfort
here, lovers, whose mistress has sailed away?
I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only, as I watched the
youths, and turned away while they still stood gazing. One, I
observed, climbed a post and waved his black hat before the
white-washed side of the shed over the dock, whence I supposed he
would tumble into the water. Another had tied a handkerchief to the
end of a somewhat baggy umbrella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had
forgotten to wave it, so that it hung mournfully down, as if
overpowered with grief it could not express. The entranced youth
still held the umbrella aloft.
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