The visitor, hardly regarding her, still stood in the centre of the little room, her sad eyes wandering over its humble furniture and adornments as if each one were a relic.

“Are there some little things of hers, clothes or playthings or books,—­any thing she touched or loved?” asked she presently in a hushed voice.

Mrs. Ginniss, still crying, rose, and opened a drawer in the pine bureau, which, with a looking-glass and some vases of blue china upon it, stood as the ornamental piece of furniture of the place.

“Here they bees, ivery one uv ’em, and poor enough for her, an’ yit the bist we could git,” said she.

More as a bird, long restrained and suddenly set free, would dart toward the tree where nest and young awaited it, than in the ordinary mode of human movement, the mother, so long hungering for smallest tidings of her child, darted upon this sudden mine of wealth, and, bending low, seemed to caress each object with her eyes before touching it.  Then tearing off her gloves, she laid her white fingers softly upon the coarse garments, the broken toys, the few worn books, and bits of paper covered with pencil-marks, the strip of gay patchwork with the needle still sticking in it, and the little brass thimble upon it.

At one end of the drawer stood a little pair of slippers, with some slightly soiled white stockings rolled up and laid within them.  At sight of these, a low cry-it might have been of pain, it might have been of joy-crept from between the pale lips of the mother; and, reverently lifting the little shoes, she kissed them again and again, in an eager, longing fashion, as one might kiss the lips of a dying child whom human love may yet recall to human life.

“Thim’s the little shlippers that Teddy saved his bit uv spinding-money till he could buy for her, bekase he said the fut uv her wor too purty to put in sich sthrong shoe’s as I’d got; and thin it was mesilf that saved the white little shtockings out uv me tay an’ sugar; an’ it’s like a little fairy (save me for spakin’ the word) that she lucked in ’em.”

Pressing the little shoes close to her bosom with both hands, the mother turned those mournful eyes upon the speaker, listening to every word, and, at the end, said eagerly,—­

“Tell me some more!  Tell me every thing she said and did!  Oh! was she happy?”

The word had grown so strange upon her lips and in her heart, that, as she said it, all the tense chords, so long attuned to grief, thrilled with a sharp discord; and, turning yet paler than before, she sank upon a chair, and, leaning her forehead on the edge of the open drawer, wept such tears as, pray God, happy mothers, you and I may never weep.

“O my baby, my baby!  O my little child!” moaned she again and again, until the tender heart of the Irish woman could endure no longer; and, coming to the side of her guest, she knelt beside her, and put her arms about the slender figure that shook with every sob, and drew the bright head to rest upon her own shoulder.