The Boy Artist

He recollected how the sun shone brightly on the day that she was buried, that he and Madge stood by the grave crying when she was put down in the cold earth, and that a man rode up to the paling of the quiet green churchyard, and threw the reins over his horse’s neck, and came with hurried footsteps to the grave just as the last sod was thrown upon the coffin; and how this man had sobbed and cried, and had caught them in his arms, and said, “My poor little motherless ones,” and had kissed them and cried again so piteously and wildly, that the clergyman had stopped in the service and had tried to comfort him.

And when the funeral was over, and the neighbours were taking the little ones home, how the man had held them tightly and said, “No; mine now, never to leave me again. I am their father. Margaret, I will try to explain to them what I withheld from you; is it too late?” This was the father whom their mother had spoken of with her dying breath but who had come too late to implore her forgiveness for having left her in want while he squandered his money upon his pleasure. But now, in the impulse of grief and remorse, he had determined to act differently and returned to London with his children.