'"Yes, sweetheart; I wrote a long letter, and told her everything—how ill you were, and how much you wanted her. You kept imploring her to come all through last night."
'"Did I? Ah, I have been dreaming about her so much! Henrietta, did the doctor say that I should not get well?"
'"He thought you very ill, my dear; but you are so much better this morning, that I hope he will say that you are getting quite well now."
'"If mamma would but come!" I murmured. "I think I should get well if I could only have mamma."
'"Poor child!" said Henrietta, with a sigh. "I know that I cannot nurse you as well as she would. But she will come, Fan, when my letter reaches her. I am sure she will. And now, my dear child, you have talked too much already. You must lie still and rest now, and try to go to sleep."
'I was thinking of those words of the turnkey's wife, about my father being ruined, and not being able to pay the ransom; but I did not feel equal to the effort of asking Henrietta whether there was any truth in them, for I was very weary, and ill, and languid, and so weak that I could not even lift my arm. One thing more, however, I wanted to ask, before I followed her advice. "Henrietta, did you ever hear whether our letters were sent,—those letters that we wrote, you know, that first day?"
'"I do not know, but I fear not; for although I did ask the turnkey about them once, he would not give me a direct answer, and he looked so grim that I was afraid to say anything more."
'Henrietta did not tell me then that her ransom was already paid, and that the order for her release had been made out that very morning.
'It was not until some time afterwards that I found out how much I had to thank her for: how she had nursed me through those three days when I was lying between life and death, as untiringly and devotedly as if she had been mamma herself; nor how, when she might have left the jail the moment the order of release was signed, she had chosen instead to stay with me in the pestilential atmosphere of that wretched, comfortless little room, utterly refusing to leave me until my mother should come to take her place. But, as I said before, all this had not dawned upon me as yet. Besides, I felt that no one, however kind, could be quite the same as mamma when one was ill; so I am afraid I must have seemed very ungrateful to poor Henrietta, when I murmured fretfully, "Oh dear! oh dear! why doesn't my mother come? No one can nurse me as well as she can. I am sure I shall die if she won't come soon. Oh, mamma, mamma, I do want you so very much!" Then, with Henrietta's soothing words, and sweet low tones sounding in my ears, I sank exhausted into a long, deep sleep.'