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Updated: May 9, 2025
"'Cause she's always and always dust as good as she can be. And she never and never says 'Stop this minute! er 'at I make her head ache, er 'at I 'm naughty, er anything. She dust puts her arms all 'round me and says, 'Dear little girl. An' 'en I 'm good. And I love my new mamma, I do, better than my gone-away mamma."
"An' she 's been my new mamma ever since, an' I 'm going to keep her for my mamma always and always, and I don't want my gone-away mamma ever to come back, 'cause I love my new mamma best." Just then there burst upon the warm, soft air a babel of shouts and yells and loud hurrahs. The wee maiden turned a brightening face in the direction of the uproar, and announced: "That's wecess. I must go now.
All of them told me stories, read to me, and Frank, one of my big gone-away brothers, sent me the prettiest little book. It had a green cover with gold on the back, and it was full of stories and poems, not so very hard, because I could read every one of them, with help on a few words. The piece I liked best was poetry.
An' he said, 'Poor little girl!" She paused a moment, and then, with the air of one summing up a long discourse, she exclaimed, "An' that's why I 've got a gone-away mamma!" I stroked the little one's hand, which nestled confidingly in mine, and said, half absently, "And she never came back?"
But I knew that remorse had had its perfect work, and that the sudden vision of a sweet child-face out of whose rosy lips came the accusing words, "I love my new mamma best, and I don't want my gone-away mamma ever to come back," had pierced her heart through and through. "Since I breathed, A houseless head, beneath the sun and stars, The soul of the wood has stricken through my blood."
She hugged her chubby arms close up to her breast as if she had them around the loved one's neck, screwed up her pretty face, and gave the little grunt with which childhood expresses the fulness of its affection. "Did you see the tourist man take your gone-away mamma away?" "No, I didn't see him, but he did, 'cause once she went to take a walk an' 'en he never came back any more."
He only wanted a week or so a little chance to live, to play with this little boy, and perhaps be happy! Yet, after all, dared he leave those people to other hands when they were counting so on him, and had so little else to count upon? What, he asked, would she, the Gone-Away Lady, have counseled him to do?
"You are a very brave little girl not to cry." "Yes, I know it," she replied, looking at me with big violet eyes, frank and confiding. She was a beautiful child, with a glorious perfection of feature and complexion. "I 'm always brave. My papa says so, and my new mamma says so, too. I 've got two mammas my new mamma and my gone-away mamma. But I like my new mamma best." "Do you? Why?"
And she gave a decided little nod, as if in defiance of some privately urged claim. "Where has your other mamma gone?" I asked, expecting to hear but the one answer. She raised her long lashes and looked at me seriously. "You 're a tourist lady, ain't you? That's why you don't know. Well, it was a tourist man, 'at stayed a long time, who tooked my gone-away mamma away." "A tourist man?
"She was as charming a little thing as I ever saw, but she was not at all complimentary to the 'gone-away mamma, for she declared, emphatically, that she loved her new mamma best, and meant to keep her always, and did n't want her gone-away mamma ever to come back, because the new mamma loved her so much, and they had such good times together."
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