on her all at once, and nothing clear nor welcome, and yet she sang and laughed about it! How long this lasted, I doen’t know; but then theer come a sleep; and in that sleep, from being a many times stronger than her own self, she fell into the weakness of the littlest child.”
Here he stopped, as if for relief from the terrors of his own description. After being silent for a few moments, he pursued his story.
“It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that there warn’t a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a tide, upon the shore. It was her belief, at first, that she was at home upon a Sunday morning; but the vine leaves as she see at the winder, and the hills beyond, warn’t home, and contradicted of her. Then, come in her friend to watch alongside of her bed; and then she know’d as the old boat warn’t round that next pint in the bay no more, but was fur off; and know’d where she was, and why; and broke out a-crying on that good young woman’s bosom, wheer I hope her baby is a-lying now, a-cheering of her with its pretty eyes!”
He could not speak of this good friend of Emily’s without a flow of tears. It was in vain to try. He broke down again, endeavouring to bless her!
“That done my Em’ly good,” he resumed, after such emotion as I could not behold without sharing in; and as to my aunt, she wept with all her heart; “that done Em’ly good, and she begun to mend. But, the language of that country was quite gone from her, and she was forced to make signs. So she went on, getting better from day to day, slow, but sure, and trying to learn the names of common things—names as she seemed never to have heerd in all her life—till one evening come, when she was a-setting at her window, looking at a little girl at play upon the beach. And of a sudden this child held out her hand, and said, what would be in English, ‘Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!’—for you are