“Don’t excite yourself, dear. You shall go soon, for you’ve had a wonderful escape. Do you suffer at all?”
“Some. My hands, my face are smarty and queer. But—did Sophy get burned instead? Oh! she was so good! So strong I couldn’t make her stop hiding me with her own self, though I tried and tried. Until it got so hot and I—I couldn’t think right. The darling girl! She—Why! What makes her lie that way on her face?” demanded Jessica, rising on her elbow and staring across to the other limp little figure whose hump protruded under the light bed-covering.
The nurse knew it was better to appease one patient’s curiosity than to arouse the other, more badly injured one.
“Lie still and I will tell you. She is a heroine. Her back is rather badly scorched and burned, but not fatally so. It has been carefully dressed and it is more comfortable for her to rest as she is doing now than to lie in a more natural position. She was a brave little creature and, practically, saved your life. Try to help her get well by keeping very quiet.”
In ordinary, Jessica was not a crying girl, but the tears chased themselves now down her own cheeks, white with applications to relieve that “smarting” to which she had acknowledged but that already, in view of Sophy’s greater hurt, seemed absurdly trivial.
Nor did the wise attendant try to stop this flood, a sure relief to startled nerves and grieving heart. But after a brief time Jessica ceased weeping and whispered:
“Do you know where my folks are?”
“There’s an old man in the waiting-room who came with you. He is almost wild with anxiety and, if the head-nurse allows, I will bring him in to see you for a moment. On condition that you will not excite yourself nor the other child.”
“Oh! I will be as quiet as quiet! It’s Ephy! I’m sure it’s my darling ‘Forty-niner!’ Fetch him, please, right quick! I’ll be as good as you want, only let him come.”
He came, half-blinded by his grateful tears, as he bent above this darling of his old age, too thankful toward Heaven for speech, and only able to clasp and unclasp her small hands in his own trembling ones, till she asked in a whisper: