"May we come back soon, mamma?" asked Lucy, standing on tiptoe to wave at her.
"Just as soon as Harry is well, darling. Ask grandpa to pray that he will be well soon, won't you?"
"Jenny'll pay," lisped the baby, from Doctor Fraser's arms, where, with her cap on one side and her little feet kicking delightedly, she was beguiled by the promise of a birthday cake over at grandma's.
"I'll look in again in an hour or two," said the doctor in his jovial tones as he swung down the stairs. Then Lucy pattered after him, and in a few minutes the front door closed loudly behind them, and Virginia went back to the nursery, where Harry was coughing the strangling cough that tore at her heart.
By nightfall he had grown very ill, and when the next dawn came, it found her, wan, haggard, and sleepless, fighting beside the old doctor under the improvised tent of sheets which covered the little bed. The thought of self went from her so utterly that she only remembered she was alive when Marthy brought food and tried to force it between her lips.
"But you must swallow it, ma'am. You need to keep up your strength."
"How do you think he looks, Marthy? Does he feel quite so hot to you? He seems to breathe a little better, doesn't he?"
And during the long day, while the patch of sunlight grew larger, lay for an hour like yellow silk on the windowsill, and then slowly dwindled into the shadow, she sat, without moving, between the bed and the table on which stood the bottles of medicine, a glass, and a pitcher of water. When the child slept, overcome by the stupor of fever, she watched him, with drawn breath, lest he should fade away from her if she were to withdraw her passionate gaze for an instant. When he awoke and lay moaning, while his little body shook with the long stifling gasps that struggled between his lips, she held him tightly clasped in her arms, with a woman's pathetic faith in the power of a physical pressure to withstand the immaterial forces of death. A hundred times during the day he aroused himself, stirred faintly in his feverish sleep, and called her name in the voice of terror with which he used to summon her in the night.
"It isn't the black man now, darling, is it? Remember there is no black man, and mamma is close here beside you."
No, it wasn't the black man; he wasn't afraid of the darkness now, but he would like to have his ship. When she brought it, he played for a few minutes, and dozed off still grasping the toy in his hands. At twelve the doctor came, and again at four, when the patch of sunlight, by which she told the hours, had begun to grow fainter on the windowsill.