Lost Gip by Hesba Stretton

LITTLE Gip's curly head was still resting very quietly on Johnny's pillow, and Sandy's arm was stretched across his friend to touch Gip's soft hand. But now Mr. Mason lifted the child from the bed, and told him in a whisper to take her away.

He carried her downstairs into the dark and desolate kitchen below, where the grey ashes of the dead fire held no spark of light or heat. Could all that he had passed through that evening be really true? Was this indeed lost Gip whom he held so closely to his heart? Little Gip, for whom he had searched, with a heavy heart and a spirit bowed down by dread, through so many long months, and in so many miserable places? If it were true, why was he not leaping and shouting for joy? What was it that made him sink down on the solitary hearth, with no other light than the glimmer of the gas, burning amid the funeral plumes in the shop beyond the kitchen, and hide his face on Gip's head, and break out into deep sorrowful sobs? Oh, if John Shafto could only have lived one day longer!