It was just as well to write like that as to write tenderly. How
could he give way to entreaty? The facts had not changed: there was
no new event to alter his opinion.
It grew darker, the fire-light shining over the room. The two
biggest of the younger children had gone out with their mother; the
four smallest, their ages ranging from three-and-a-half years to
eleven, all in black frocks, were gathered round the hearth babbling
their own little subjects. Tess at length joined them, without
lighting a candle.
"This is the last night that we shall sleep here, dears, in the house
where we were born," she said quickly. "We ought to think of it,
oughtn't we?"
They all became silent; with the impressibility of their age they
were ready to burst into tears at the picture of finality she had
conjured up, though all the day hitherto they had been rejoicing in
the idea of a new place. Tess changed the subject.
"Sing to me, dears," she said.
"What shall we sing?"
"Anything you know; I don't mind."
There was a momentary pause; it was broken, first, in one little
tentative note; then a second voice strengthened it, and a third
and a fourth chimed in unison, with words they had learnt at the
Sunday-school--
Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again;
In Heaven we part no more.
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