“It was Max did it, you know. I’ve come to see her, and you mustn’t tell me she’s so sick as that. Why, she was that beautiful to me—I—I—”
Waiting not an instant longer, and despite the gardener’s warning, Mary Jane clicked across the smooth path, over the street, and up to the very front door of the mansion, wherein lay a precious little form, incessantly watched by a crowd of nurses and friends.
The outer door was ajar, a footman standing just within, keeping guard and ready to answer in a whisper the constant string of inquiries which neighbors sent to make. Past him, while he was talking to another, slipped Mary Jane, her crutches making no sound upon the thick carpet. One thought possessed her, one only; and made her almost unconscious of the novel scenes about her. Bonny-Gay was ill. Bonny-Gay might die. Well, she would have one more glimpse of that beloved face, no matter who tried to stop her.
Her brain worked fast. Sick people were generally up-stairs; up-stairs she sped. Sick folks had to be quiet. She paused an instant and peered down the dim corridor. She saw that as the people passing along this hall approached a distant door they moved even more gently and cautiously. In that room, then, lay her darling!
It seemed like the passage of some bird, so swift she was and so unerring, for before even the most watchful of the nurses could intervene she had entered the darkened chamber and crossed to a white cot in the middle of it. By that time it was too late to stop her. Any noise, any excitement, however trivial, might prove fatal, the doctors thought.
Bonny-Gay lay, shorn of her beautiful curls, almost as white as her pillows. But the small head moved restlessly, incessantly, and the silence of the night had given place to a delirious, rambling talk. All her troubled fancies seemed to be of the last scenes she had witnessed: the “Playgrounds,” with the eager children crowding them. She was see-sawing with Jimmy O’Brien, and hoeing cabbages with the baby. She laughed at some inner picture of his absurd accidents, and finally, as some peril menaced him, raised her shoulders slightly and shrieked:
“Mary Jane! Oh! Mary Jane—come quick!”
All the watchers caught their breath—startled, fearful of the worst. Yet upon the silence that followed the cry, there rose the sweetest, the gladdest of voices:
“Why, yes, Bonny-Gay! I’ve come!”