Isobel by James Oliver Curwood

Until late that night Billy sat beside his campfire with the snow-man. Strange and new thoughts had come to him, and among these was the wondering one asking himself why he had never built a snow-man before. When he went to bed he dreamed of the snow-man and of little Isobel; and the little girl's laughter and happiness when she saw the curious form the dissolving snow-man had taken in the heat of the fire when she awoke the following morning filled him again with those boyish visions of happiness that he had seen just ahead of him. At other times he would have told himself that he was no longer reasonable. After they had breakfasted and started on the day's journey he laughed and talked with baby Isobel, and a dozen times in the forenoon he picked her up in his arms and carried her behind the dogs.

"We're going home," he kept telling her over and over again. "We're going home -- down to mama -- mama -- mama! " He emphasized that; and each time Isobel's pretty mouth formed the word mama after him his heart leaped exultantly. By the end of that day it had become the sweetest word in the world to him. He tried mother, but his little comrade looked at him blankly, and he did not like it himself. "Mama, mama, mama," he said a hundred times that night beside their campfire, and before he tucked her away in her warm blankets he said something to her about "Now I lay me down to sleep. " Isobel was too tired and sleepy to comprehend much of that. Even after she was deep in slumber and Billy sat alone smoking his pipe he whispered that sweetest word in the world to himself, and took out the tress of shining hair and gazed at it joyously in the glow of the fire. By the end of the next day little Isobel could say almost the whole of the prayer his own mother had taught him years and years and years ago, so far back that his vision of her was not that of a woman, but of an elusive and wonderful angel; and the fourth day at noon she lisped the whole of it without a word of assistance from him.