“‘SAY UNTO HER,—IS IT WELL WITH THEE? IS IT WELL WITH THY HUSBAND? IS IT WELL WITH THE CHILD? AND SHE ANSWERED, IT IS WELL.’
“The grass grew green and fresh there, and the little blue forget-me-nots that Kline had planted about the grave soon covered it with their flowers. And sometimes when Kline stood there leaning over the paling, he almost fancied that it was as she said,—that God had sent her to take care of them; and that it was not the soft spring wind which stroked his face, but the hand of his little Sneeflocken.
“He thanked God that she was safe in the arms of the Good Shepherd, and for the hope that when his time came to go, he should find her in heaven.”
“Were you that discontented pine cone?” said Carl, when he had sat for some time thinking over the story.
“Yes,” said the cone, “and I was carried into the house as I told you. And then because Sneeflocken had once held me in her little hand, Kline said he would keep me always.”
“But I say!” said Carl, knitting his brows and looking very eager; “how did you get _here_?”
“Because other people were as foolish as I was, and didn’t know when they were well off,” said the cone. “For Kline was your mother’s grandfather; and when he died, and she left her home to follow the fortunes of John Krinken, she brought the old pine cone along; to remember the tall fir trees that waved above the old hut in Norway, and to remind her of little Foss, and Kline, and Sneeflocken.”
“‘Clary! Clary!—wake up! you’ll be late. See how late it’s getting.’
“‘Well mother—but I’m so tired! What’s the good of living so, mother?’
“‘One must live somehow, child—till one’s time comes to die.’
“Clary did not say, but she thought, as she raised herself slowly from the hard little straw bed, that it did not matter how soon that time came for her. Work! work!—living to work and working to live. Working hard, too, and for what a pittance of life! Was it _living_ to sleep half as much as she wanted, and then to get up in the cold grey dawn of a winter’s morning, get three or four dirty children out of bed and into such clothes as they had; and then after as much breakfast as she had had sleep, to take that long cold walk in her old straw bonnet and thin cotton shawl to the printing-office,—there to stand all day supplying the busy iron fingers of the press? How thin and blue her own were!