“Yes, yes, my dear; but you’ll soon do better now.”
“But you’d better let old Billy Burge—”
Feelier stopped short, conscious of the slip of her guilty tongue, and looked up at her gentle attendant as if she expected a blow.
“I won’t call him that name agen,” she said demurely, “but if he come he’d do teacher good; only if he did come, he’d ketch the fever too, and I don’t know what’s best, only we mustn’t let teacher die.”
“No, no, my dear; of course not,” whispered little Miss Burge hastily.
“But if she did die I know what I should do,” said Feelier dreamily, and with a drowsy look in her eyes, the effect of being washed and the cooler atmosphere of the room inducing sleep.
“What should you do, my dear?” said Miss Burge, pressing down the pillow to let the cool air blow upon her cheek.
“I should set violets and primroses all over her grave; and if any of the other girls was to pick any of ’em, oh, I would give ’em such a banging! And then—then—then—”
And then poor, weak Ophelia Potts sank into a profound sleep, and little Miss Burge wiped her eyes and sat and watched Hazel’s weary, restless head; listening to her broken sentences and the incoherent mutterings, all of which were to the same tune—that she had been weak and cruel and ungrateful to one who had been all devotion to her, and that she would never rest till she had tried to make him some amends.
“Poor Bill, if he could only hear her now, how glad he’d be!” sighed the watcher; “but this will all pass away, and when she gets well she’ll never know she said a word. Poor Bill; it won’t never—it couldn’t ever be!”