"I am afraid you cannot afford to send that sum just now," said Mr.
Phillips. "Perhaps you will do well to think it over."
"So I will," said Mrs. Child, and departed.
In the course of the day he received a note from her, saying she had
made a mistake. It was one hundred dollars that she wished to send.
Mrs. Child's chief pleasure in coming to town was the opportunity she
found of seeing her friends. Whittier always sought her out, and their
meetings at the houses of their mutual cronies were festivals indeed.
They would sit side by side, while memories crowded up and filled
their faces with a tenderness they could not express in words. As they
told their tales and made merry, they would sit with their hands on
each other's knees, and with glances in which tears and laughter were
closely intermingled.
"It was good to see Mrs. Child," some one remarked, after one of those
interviews.
"Yes," said Whittier, "Lyddy's bunnets aren't always in the fashion"
(with a quaint look, as much as to say, "I wonder what you think of
anything so bad"), "but we don't like her any the worse for that."
Shortly after Mrs. Child's death he wrote from Amesbury: "My heart has
been heavy ever since I heard of dear Maria Child's death. The true,
noble, loving soul! _Where_ is she? _What_ is she? _How_ is she?
The moral and spiritual economy of God will not suffer such light
and love to be lost in blank annihilation. She was herself an
evidence of immortality.
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