"I nursed you for one thing, and gave you medicine and chicken broth and milk and whiskey. Now, I shan't talk any more until the doctor comes. Lie quiet and try to sleep."
But the jagged burn on her wrist still held my gaze, and catching her hand as she turned away, I pressed my lips to it with all my strength.
"Your hand feels so queer, Sally. It's as red as if it had been scalded."
"I've been cooking my dinner, and you see I eat a great deal. There, now, that's positively my last word."
Bending over, she kissed me hurriedly, a tear fell on my face, and then before I could catch the fluttering hem of her apron, she had broken from me, and gone out, closing the door after her. For a minute I lay perfectly motionless, too weak for thought. Then opening my eyes with an effort, I stared straight up at the white ceiling, against which a green June beetle was knocking with a persistent, buzzing sound that seemed an accompaniment to the crooning lullaby of Aunt Euphronasia.
"Oh, we'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye, lil' chillun,
We'se all gwine home ter glory, by en bye."
"Will he break his wings on the ceiling, or will he fly out of the window?" I thought drowsily, and it appeared to me suddenly that my personal troubles—my illness, my anxiety for Sally, and even the poverty that must have pressed upon her—had receded to an obscure and cloudy distance, in which they became less important in my mind than the problem of the green June beetle knocking against the ceiling. "Will he break his wings or will he fly out?" I asked, with a dull interest in the event, which engrossed my thoughts to the exclusion of all personal matters. "I ought to think of Sally and the child, but I can't. My head won't let me. It has gone wrong, and if I begin to think hard thoughts I'll go delirious again. There is jessamine blooming somewhere. Did she have a spray in her hair when she bent over me? Why did she wear a gingham apron at a ball instead of pink tarlatan? No, that was not the problem I had to solve. Will he break his wings or will he fly out?"
"Oh, we'll fit on de golden slippers, by en bye, lil' chillun,"
crooned Aunt Euphronasia, rocking little Benjamin in the square of sunlight.
The song soothed me and I slept for a minute. Then starting awake in the cold sweat of terror, I struggled wildly after the problem which still eluded me.