Again in her cell, Manna read the letter, and was made aware for the first time that Eric's mother was nursing Roland. The paper trembled in her hand, as she read of Roland's constant talking with her in his fevered ravings. Why did her father write nothing of Pranken? Where was he? she asked herself; then, indignant that her thoughts should still cling to the world, with a sudden resolve she flung the letter into the open grate, and watched it break into momentary flame, and then float in light flakes up the chimney. So had it been in her heart, so ought it to be; nothing more from the outer world should reach her.
CHAPTER IX.
GROWTH DURING ILLNESS.
"He is saved!" said the doctor, and "He is saved," was repeated by voice after voice through the whole city.
The doctor enjoined double care in guarding Roland from the least excitement of any kind, and when the boy complained of the horrible tedium of his sick-room, both Eric and the doctor laughingly reminded him that he had his good time in the first place, and that ennui was the first sure step towards recovery. Roland complained also of being kept hungry, and then added, his face seeming to grow fuller and fairer as he spoke:—
"Hiawatha voluntarily suffered hunger, and do you remember, Eric, my thinking then that man was the only creature that could voluntarily hunger? Now I must practice what I preached."
Roland showed himself particularly full of affection toward Eric's mother. He maintained that she was the only person he had recognized during his delirium, and that it had caused him the greatest distress not to be able to say so at the time, but the wrong words would keep coming from his mouth. Even the Mother did not stay with him long at a time.
He rejoiced to see lilies of the valley in his room, and remembered that he had dreamed of them.
"Was not Manna with me too? I was always seeing her black eyes."
Heimchen's illness, they told him, prevented her leaving the convent.