"He shall have them, Teddy."
"Thank you, father. He isn't to wait for them, you know, because it is now he wants them. It would do me a great deal of good if I could see Timothy in them with my own eyes."
Mrs. Meadows rose, and, selecting the clothes mentioned by Teddy, told Timothy to go into her room and put them on. "If the dear Lord in his mercy should spare us this blow," she thought, "my darling boy can have new ones. How thankful, how grateful I shall be if this blessing is granted me!"
Timothy was absent from the sick-room for a much longer time than was necessary for him to throw off his ragged garments and get into Teddy's clothes. It was not out of vanity, but of delicacy, he did this, for he did not have the heart to look at himself in his better raiment. His young life had been already full of adventures, and many of them sorrowful ones, but this was the most mournful of them all. Ideas with respect to Teddy's clothes were stirring in his brain as well as in that of the mother sitting by the bedside of her dying son. "If Teddy takes a turn for the better, I can easily get into my rags again." He consoled himself with this idea, and he did up his tattered garments into a tidy bundle ready for the better emergency. He prayed that his dear friend might live. There would be little hope then of his obtaining the situation which was offered to him, but shrewd and clever as he was he was void of that kind of selfishness the gratification of which entails misfortunes upon others. "If I can't get into Mr. Loveday's shop," he thought, "I shall get something else to do, I dare say. I shall manage to rub along somehow." He would dearly love to obtain service with Mr. Loveday, but not at the expense of the life of the best friend he ever had. He remained from the sickroom so long that Mrs. Meadows had to come and beg him to return to it.
"Teddy is asking for you," she said. "Oh, my dear, he is sinking fast, I am afraid!"
"I hope you don't think it wrong of me to do this," said Timothy, looking down upon Teddy's clothes.
"Wrong, my dear? No, indeed not. It is to please our dear boy--and you shall keep them even if he does get well. But I fear--I fear-- Oh, my dear, he is the sweetest lad that ever drew breath! Never an angry word from his lips, never, never--and I have spoken cross to him often and often. He never answered me, never once. And now I am punished for it, now I am punished for it!"
It was painful to witness her anguish.
"You must not, you should not speak in that way, Mrs. Meadows," said Timothy, to whom came at this juncture an impressiveness of manner which spoke well for a true manliness of spirit in the future when he should have arrived at manhood's estate; "if Teddy knew it he would be very grieved--it would hurt him badly. You have nothing to vex yourself about, I know, who never had a mother to love"--and here Timothy's voice shook. He was aware of the strange mystery attached to his being thrust, a stranger, upon the care of strangers, and at this solemn time it forced itself upon him with a new significance.
"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Meadows, "I am sorry for you."