The Widowed Bride — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. PN ce 5 | 19 “But we haven’t done anything wrong!” persisted Ren, ‘‘and how can they put us in a jail?” Poor little innocent Rena—had she been a few years older and wiser, she might have expressed the simple tenets of her faith in the grand words of the English poet: “Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage!’ It would have been no inappropriate sentiment, for the child’s simple confidence was unshaken in the ultimate tri- umph of the right. “What will they do to us, Rena?” asked Alice, the color coming and going on her cheeks as she nestled close up to her sister. “T don’t know, Allie.” «Will they take you away from me?” | “They shall not!” exclaimed Rena, with flashing eyes. “Tl won't let them!” And Alice, somewhat encouraged by this boldly uttered assertion, twined her fingers in those of her sister. “Tr’s because you told a lie, Rena,” she said, gravely. “You said Mother-Meg’s bundle was your little brother.” “She told me to,” said puzzled Rena. — | ‘‘All the same, it wasa lie,” persisted Alice. ‘‘I don’t think Mother Meg was a good woman, Rena. She told wicked les—and she stole that cup, I know.” “But she was kind to us, Allie.” ‘“Yes, she was kind to us, but that don’t make her good. I don’t think grandpapa would have liked her, Rena.” Rena sat silent—the great puzzle of existence was too much for her small mind to solve as yet. “Oh, Allie!” she broke forth, at length, ‘‘don’t it seem a year since grandpapa died! lam somiserable, Alhe, but I can’t cry like you do.” Alice drew her little hands caressingly over her sister’s ace. “But I don’t understand it all,” she said. ‘‘We haven’t done anything, Rena, you and I, ‘but we are here locked up. Let’s make ’em let us ont.” Rena shook her head; she saw the difficulties in the way of their liberation more fully than her little sister saw them. They are coming back,” said Alice. ‘‘Rena! Rena! re- member you said they shouldn’t take you away from me!” (Ee) mm Eomicbooks