“For youth, yes; for old age, its time of greatest cheer. When you are silver-haired, as I am, you will have learned to wait patiently.”
“I never was patient; but God means to teach me, I see. It was Margaret who was always patient, always kind, always helpful. Dear God, we cannot live without her.”
Down upon her knees beside the doctor’s chair slipped broken-hearted Elsie, and grasping his hand she cried desolately: “Oh, may the good God strengthen you to save her, doctor! You don’t know all she has been to us, to everybody with whom she came in contact. She has been one of God’s good angels, sent by Him to make this selfish world more mindful of divine truth! He cannot mean to take her now with her work just begun. I know He will give you power to save her, and you will, you will, won’t you?”
With all of a childlike innocence and pleading she raised her tear-stained face to his.
“My dear child,” he replied, “all that I know I have so far applied to the case, and I am deeply interested in saving her. I have faith that I shall do it. Now, my little girl, it is not wise to give way to tears. You must keep up your strength to help me. The battle is only half-won when the crisis is passed.”
At that instant there was a timid knock at the middle door, which speedily opened to show Eph’s black face, as he whispered half-apologetically: “I don fotched some game, and reckon maybe I’s gwine ter heah some good news. Mammy’s out’n heah and we’s come ober ter help take cah of you’uns fo’ ter-night. Mammy says as how yer oughter hab some good strong coffee, an’ she don tol’ me ter ax yer should she make some ter hearten yer up a bit?”
“That’s right, Eph,” said the doctor, who knew Eph well. “Just tell Aunt Liza to go ahead; for that’s the very thing we need.”
“The world is full of kindness,” said the doctor when Eph’s black face had been withdrawn, “if one only knows how to strike the key-note.”
The interruption had been in the nature of a tonic; for the wave of intensified feeling subsided before the simple offer of the good-natured African. Elsie bent over Margaret’s bed with renewed faith and strength, and as the midnight hours grew slowly into early morning, she was as quick as the doctor to notice the least change in the symptoms.
“I think she is better, doctor,” she whispered half-questioningly.