She hid her face on my shoulder, trembling, "I have not done wrong, have I? I wanted to know what it was like—that which you said was left of little Tommy. I touched it—it was so cold. Oh! Uncle Phineas! THAT isn't poor little Tommy?"
"No, my blessed one—no, my dearest child! Don't think of it any more."
And, hardly knowing what was best to be done, I called John, and told him where I had found his little daughter. He never spoke, but snatched her out of my arms into his own, took her in his room, and shut the door.
From that time our fears never slumbered. For one whole week we waited, watching the children hour by hour, noting each change in each little face; then Muriel sickened.
It was I who had to tell her father, when as he came home in the evening I met him by the stream. It seemed to him almost like the stroke of death.
"Oh, my God! not her! Any but her!" And by that I knew, what I had long guessed, that she was the dearest of all his children.
Edwin and Walter took the disease likewise, though lightly. No one was in absolute danger except Muriel. But for weeks we had what people call "sickness in the house;" that terrible overhanging shadow which mothers and fathers well know; under which one must live and move, never resting night nor day. This mother and father bore their portion, and bore it well. When she broke down, which was not often, he sustained her. If I were to tell of all he did—how, after being out all day, night after night he would sit up watching by and nursing each little fretful sufferer, patient as a woman, and pleasant as a child play-mate—perhaps those who talk loftily of "the dignity of man" would smile. I pardon them.
The hardest minute of the twenty-four hours was, I think, that when, coming home, he caught sight of me afar off waiting for him, as I always did, at the white gate; and many a time, as we walked down to the stream, I saw—what no one else saw but God. After such times I used often to ponder over what great love His must be, who, as the clearest revelation of it, and of its nature, calls Himself "the Father."
And He brought us safe through our time of anguish: He left us every one of our little ones.
One November Sunday, when all the fields were in a mist, and the rain came pouring softly and incessantly upon the patient earth which had been so torn and dried up by east winds, that she seemed glad enough to put aside the mockery of sunshine and melt in quiet tears, we once more gathered our flock together in thankfulness and joy.