"When she sent for John she was dying and she did not know what to do
about the boy. She had no family--no near friend.
"I went with my husband to see her. There did not seem to be anything
else to do. I had no feeling; it was plain duty. Even with the touch of
death upon her, Elizabeth Thornton was the most beautiful woman I have
ever seen. I cannot describe the sensation she made upon me; but she was
like an innocent, pure child who had played with harmful and soiled toys
but had come wearily to the day's end, herself unsullied.
"When she knew about me she was broken-hearted. She wept and called to
little Dick, who sat in a small chair by her couch:
"'Oh! little son, we could have managed, couldn't we? We would not have
hurt any one for the world, would we, sonny?' And the boy got up and
soothed her as a man might have done, and he was only a little creature.
I think I loved him from the moment I saw him shielding that poor, dying
mother from her own folly. 'Course, mummy, course!' he repeated over and
again. Then he looked at me with the eyes of my own dead baby. Both
children were startlingly like the father.
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