“Your poor child? Mother! What CAN this mean?”
She broods and blesses me, she calms and gathers me. With a mighty cry, I fling myself against her heart, and sob my soul out, there.
“You are better, child,” she says. “Be quiet. You will live.”
Upon the edge of the sick-bed, sitting strained and weary, she leans to comfort me. The night-lamp burns dimly on the floor behind the door. The great red chair stands with my white woollen wrapper thrown across the arm. In the window the magenta geranium droops freezing. Mignonette is on the table, and its breath pervades the air. Upon the wall, the cross, the Christ, and the picture of my father look down.
The doctor is in the room; I hear him say that he shall change the medicine, and some one, I do not notice who, whispers that it is thirty hours since the stupor, from which I have aroused, began. Alice comes in, and Tom, I see, has taken Mother’s place, and holds me—dear Tom!—and asks me if I suffer, and why I look so disappointed.
Without, in the frosty morning, the factory-bells are calling the poor girls to their work. The shutter is ajar, and through the crack I see the winter day dawn on the world.
Standard and Popular Library Books
SELECTED FROM THE CATALOGUE OF
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.