“Yes. But the other pain is better,” she said, with trembling lips. “Aunt Marion, kiss me,—once—once more.”
And the look of peace on her sweet face, when I stood up, was startling to me. What had I been about all those past weeks, with this poor lonely child longing for my love and sympathy, which yet I had studiously withheld?
Then I went downstairs, and told my husband and Cherry and Jack of Maimie’s proposal to go to a hospital. Robert heard silently. Jack burst into an angry exclamation.
“What do you think, mother?” Cherry asked.
“If Maimie goes, I’ll go too,” Jack said fiercely. “I’ll sit outside on the steps till she is well.”
“Jack, don’t be childish,” my husband said gravely. “The question is—would Maimie be best off here or there?”
“Here, of course,” Jack said.
“I would rather nurse her here,” murmured Cherry. “Mother, what do you think?”
I looked at Robert and said,—“I think Maimie might be actually better off there,—for food and medicine and so on. But she is a sensitive child,—and I think she would feel going among strangers. And Robert,—it does seem as if she had been given over to us, to be taken care of and I don’t like to send her away.”
Robert’s face lighted up with relief, and Cherry broke into a smile of happiness. But Jack threw his arms round me, and—big fellow that he was—burst into a flood of tears. I had my boy’s heart back again,—mine as much as ever it had been.