"Ah!" said Aunt Charlotte; "poor dear, it has been a great shock to her, the poor little boy being taken so much worse."
It was a comfort to every one that at that moment Miss Manners came in through the shop, asking for Jessie Hollis.
"The poor little boy is very ill," she said. "The only thing that seems to soothe him is a bit of a verse that his sister Mary says her teacher taught her. That was you--is it not, Jessie? Mary can only say half, and we can't make it out; but she says, 'If teacher was but here.'"
Of course Miss Lee was ready to spare Jessie for such a reason, and she folded up her work while Miss Manners had a little talk with Mrs. Cuthbert, on the mingled pain and sweetness of the giving up her only son to be one of those sent forth "to sow beside all waters."
"I am so glad he should have seen you, ma'am, before he leaves us," said his mother, the tears rising in her quiet eyes. "I only wish he could have seen Miss Edith--Mrs. Howard; for indeed, ma'am, I always feel that whatever good my children have learnt at home, was owing to the way I was brought up and the way Miss Edith used to talk to us."
"Nothing will make my sister so happy as to hear it, Amy," said Miss Manners. "Somehow it seems to chime in with what I had ventured to bring as a little remembrance of your old home for your son. I had prepared it to send the St. Augustine's scholar, before I knew I should see him."
She gave him a beautiful little _Christian Year_ and _Lyra Innocentium_ in a case together, and as the book-marker was the illuminated text--
"In the morning sow thy seed, And in the evening withhold not thine hand, For thou knowest not which shall prosper."
Ambrose Cuthbert thanked the lady in a very nice way, telling her that he should value her gift much, and that he hoped to make the poems his companions and often his guides in his work.
So with a warm pressure of the hands of both mother and son, Miss Manners walked away with Jessie.
"I think," she presently said, "some of your bread on the waters is coming back to you, Jessie. They say that little Mary Smithers has been such a comfort to her little brother, by repeating to him what she learns on Sundays, and that she has been so much more good and attentive to him of late."