The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

of course, it didn’t fit and hadn’t any point; and when she delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering to herself why it didn’t seem as funny as it did when she first heard it.  But no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting that the fault was not with them and there wasn’t any to see.

You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think.  She had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us.  And she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting.  Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it—­well, you couldn’t help admiring her, and you couldn’t help imitating her; not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society.  So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.

CHAPTER II

When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, and I never saw her again.  She was broken-hearted, and so was I, and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair.  She said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward.  She had gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply, for her good and ours.  One may see by this that she had a wise and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it.

So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through our tears; and the last thing she said—­keeping it for the last to make me remember it the better, I think—­was, “In memory of me, when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your mother, and do as she would do.”

Do you think I could forget that?  No.