“Yes, he’ll live—at least, I don’t see why he shouldn’t,” said his uncle. “Yes, God willing, he’ll live;” but he went out to his patients the next morning with an anxious brow.
A terrible awakening came to Oscar, after that long death-like stillness; weary days of restless insensibility and pain followed. Poor suffering boy, it was hard to hear him moan and rave over the fancied peril of the girls.
“Inna, Inna!” he would cry. “I believe she cared for me more than anybody else in the world, and now I’m leaving her to die. I would save her if I could,” and he would try to spring out of his bed—only try, poor maimed lad; but these fits of restless insensibility wasted his strength sadly.
In vain Mrs. Grant tried to soothe him; sometimes his uncle sent to the Owl’s Nest for Inna, exiled there against her will, because being in the house, hearing his moans and wild cries, [p140] made her pale and ill, following close upon the strain to her childish nerves before.
The doctor’s heart misgave him terribly at this time. Would his dear dead brother’s son die—slip, as it were, away from him, his father’s brother, who had taken the friendless lad to his heart, in the place of the younger brother he had well-nigh idolised? Only in his quiet, reserved, absent-minded way he had never thought how much he cared for him. He sent for his small niece—the child who had stolen into all their hearts with her gentle, unobtrusive love, and would stand aside from the bed when she came with a heavy sigh, while she spoke the boy’s name. She had more power to soothe him than he; she laid her small cool hand on Oscar’s feverish one, holding it till he seemed to understand who it was near him. Then he would sink into long, unrefreshing, heavy slumber, to awake to all the wild frenzy again. Thus, to and fro went the little maiden from the farm to the Owl’s Nest and Madame Giche, who chatted to and tried to amuse her when there, and to beguile her from her childish anxiety.
“Yes, dear, my husband descended from a [p141] French family,” she said one evening, finding her in the picture-gallery, where she so loved to be, as usual passing from picture to picture, and always stopping at that of Madame Giche’s son, to think over the sad tale, and to wonder where that little child was whom Madame Giche had never found. “Yes, dear, he was of French family. Some said my son was like him, but I think he was more like me;” and the aged lady regarded his portrait fondly, standing behind her little guest.
“I think he’s very much like you, dear Madame Giche; and, do you know, he always reminds me of mamma; ’tis the eyes, I think—they look at me so!” There came a quiver into the child’s voice.
“Were mamma’s eyes dark?” questioned Madame Giche.
“Oh, no! Mamma’s eyes are like mine. People say I am very like mamma.”
“And papa—what is he like?”