"Oh, I just couldn't live without mother!" and the tears overflowed Tudie's eyes.
"And I know it would break her heart, and father's, too, if they lost us. And so we ought to try and make each other happy. I mean to think more about it. And, oh, Tudie, if Mrs. Reed could be converted! People are sometimes when they've been very ill. Suppose we pray for that."
They did heartily; and Josie resolved not to miss one night. It would make bonny Prince Charlie so happy to have his mother changed into a sweet, tender woman.
Charles didn't dare pray for that. God knew what was best for any one, and He did have the power. He wondered what things were right to put in one's prayers. Some years after he came to know it was "all things," just as one might ask of a human father, knowing that sometimes even the father after the flesh, in his larger wisdom, saw that it was best to deny.
"Don't you want to look in on your mother?" Cousin Jane said the next morning. He had not seen her in several days.
"Oh, yes," answered Charles.
Mrs. Reed had been thin before; but now she looked ghostly, with her sunken eyes and sharpened nose and chin. Charles had a great desire to kiss her; but she did not approve of such "foolishness." Her poor skeleton hand, that had done so much hard and useless work, lay on the spread in a limp fashion, as if it would never do anything again.
Charles took it up and pressed it to his cheek. Mrs. Reed opened her eyes, and a wavering light, hardly a smile, crossed her face.
"I've been very sick," and, oh, how faint the sound was, quivering, too, as if it had not the strength to steady itself! And then the thin lids fell. The death-like pallor startled him.
"But you're going to get well again."