"Won't you sing to her a bit, miss, before you go?" said the husband beseechingly. "It'll do her more good than all the doctor's stuff."
"I don't think she's well enough," said Hester.
"Not to get all the good on it, I daresay, miss," rejoined the man; "but she'll hear it like in a dream, an' she'll think it's the angels a singin'; an' that'll do her good, for she do like all them creaturs!"
Hester yielded and sang, thinking all the time how the ways of the open-eyed God look to us like things in a dream, because we are only in the night of his great day, asleep before the brightness of his great waking thoughts. The woman had been tossing and moaning in an undefined discomfort, but as she sang she grew still, and when she ceased lay as if asleep.
"Thank you, miss," said the man. "You can do more than the doctor, as I told you! When he comes, he always wakes her up; you make her sleep true!"
CHAPTER XLII.
DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP.
In the meantime yet worse trouble had come upon the poor Frankses. About a week after they had taken possession of the cellar, little Moxy, the Serpent of the Prairies, who had been weakly ever since his fall down the steps, by which he had hurt his head and been sadly shaken, became seriously ill, and grew worse and worse. For some days they were not much alarmed, for the child had often been ailing—oftener of late since they had not been faring so well; and even when they were they dared not get a doctor to him for fear of being turned out, and having to go to the workhouse.
By this time they had contrived to make the cellar a little more comfortable. They managed to get some straw, and with two or three old sacks made a bed for the mother and the baby and Moxy on the packing-case. They got also some pieces of matting, and contrived to put up a screen betwixt it and the rickety door. By the exercise of their art they had gained enough to keep them in food, but never enough to pay for the poorest lodging. They counted themselves, however, better off by much than if they had been crowded with all sorts in such lodging as a little more might have enabled them to procure.