"As kind and thoughtful as ever, I suppose, Ann?"
"Lor bless you!—yes."
"What a long while it seems since——"
"Since you've held your tongue," added Ann. "Yes, it does. I'd keep quiet a bit now, if I was you."
Thus adjured, Mattie relapsed into silence, and Ann Packet, thinking her charge was asleep, stole out of the room a short while afterwards, and went into the streets marketing. In the night the fever gained apace with our heroine; the next day the doctor pronounced her worse—enjoined strict quietness and care.
"He seems afraid of me," said Mattie, after he had gone, "as if there were anything to be alarmed at, even if I did die. Why, what could be better for me, Ann?"
"Oh! don't—oh! don't."
"Not that I am going to die—I don't feel like it," said Mattie. "I can see myself getting strong again, and fighting," she added, with a little shudder, "my battles again. There, Ann, you need not look so scared; I won't die to please you."
It was a forced air of cheerfulness, put on to raise the spirits of her nurse; and succeeded to a certain extent in its object, although Ann told her not to go on like that—it wasn't proper.
Mattie lay and thought of the chances for and against her that day; what if that burning fever and increasing restlessness gained the mastery, who would be the worse for her loss, and might not she, with God's help, be the better? She was scarcely a religious woman; but the elements of true religion were within her, and only biding their time. She was honest, pure-minded, anxious to do good for others, bore no one malice, and forgave all trespasses against her—she went to chapel every Sunday—and she did not feel so far off from heaven on that sick bed. She thought once or twice that she would be glad to die, if she were sure of the future happiness of those for whom she had lived. She would like to know the end of the story, and then—rest. She could not die without seeing the old faces, though, and therefore she must make an effort to exist for her own sake.