Melody The Story of a Child

u will listen to

spoke, taking the bearings of house and garden, noting the turn of the road, the distance of the

hat voice! It sings bank-notes and gold-pieces, every note of it. You'll be a rich woman, and she will be a great singer,-one of the very greatest. Her being blind makes it all the better. I wouldn't have her like other people, not for anything. The blind prima-donna,-my stars! wouldn't it draw? I see the posters now. 'Nature's greatest marvel, the blind singer! Splendid talent enveloped in darkness.' She will be the success of the day, ma'am. Lord, and to think of my chancing

for the sort of thing you talk about. She-she is the same as our own child, my sister's and mine. We mean to keep her by us as long as we live. I

e change at this, saw that he had made a point, and hastened to pursue it. "What can the child have, if she spends her life here? No education, no pleasure,-nothing. Nice little place, no doubt, for those that are used to it, but-Lord! a child that has the whole world before her, to pick and choose! She must go to Europe, ma'am! She will sing

lf any little luxury, that the beloved sister might have everything she fancied. But did she

s child will support you, ma'am, instead of your supporting her. Support you, do I say? Why, you'll be rolling in wealth in a few years! You spoke of a sister, ma'am. Is she in go

invalid," said Mi

with subtle intuition, the man assumed a tone of moral loftiness, as if calling Miss Vesta to account for all delinquencies, past and future,-"the steward, or even the stewardess, of this great treasure. It means e

mple pleasures, was so straight, leading from the cottage door to that quiet spot in the old burying-ground where she and Rejoice would one day rest side by side. They had taught Melody what they could. She had books in raised print, sent regularly from the institution where she had learned to read and write. She was happy; no child could ever have been happier, Miss Vesta thought, if she had had three pairs of eyes. She was the heart of the village,

l in the world, for those dear eyes to rest on; banks of flowers, costly ornaments, everything that luxury could devise or heart desire. And on one of these splendid couches (oh, she could move as she pleased from one to the other, instead of lying always in the one narrow white bed!),-on one of them lay her sister Rejoice, in a lace wrapper, such as Miss Vesta had read about once in a fashion magazine; all lace, creamy and soft, with delicate ribbons here and there. There she lay; and yet-was it she? Miss Vesta tried hard to give life to this image, to make it smile with her sister's eyes, and speak with her sister's voice; but it had a strange,

joice, whom Melody loved so; for whom the child would count any toil, any privation, merely an added pleasure, even as Vesta herself would. Miss Vesta held her breath, and pra

m away. It was a pretty picture; the stranger's eyes brightened as he gazed at it. But for the first time in her life Miss Vesta was not glad to see Melody. The child began to sing, and the woman listened for the words, with a vague trouble darkening over her pert

last verse of an old song, which Vesta Dale had heard all her life, and had neve

hat is better than

my heart you

poor man's

e hath n

'd a thousand a

e'd a thous

have them. It's inside that one has to be happy; one can't be happy from the outside, ever. I should think it would be harder if on

ss when it had sweet rushes to play with; and Miss Vesta turned to the stranger with a quick, fierce movement. "Go away!" s

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him into good-humor again. His patients had been very trying, especially the last one he had visited,-an old lady who sent for him from ten miles' distance, and then told him she had taken seventy-five bottles of Vegetine without benefit, and wa

lls in the morning. There was nothing whatever the matter with the old harridan. Here was the turn; now in a moment he would see Vesta sitting in the doorway at her

ith white hair flying on the wind, with wild looks? Her dress was disordered; her eyes stared in anguish; her lips stammered, making confused sounds,

n! stolen! and R