“They can get there, and we can’t. We can’t get out of this hot steaming place: and those hills look further off every day. I wish my uncle had been dead before he brought us down off the moors last time. I wish he had, I know. If I was on the moor now, after the plovers...”
“Come, come; forget all that now, and set to work,” interrupted Oliver. “If you won't call Spy to help, I will see whether he will mind me.”
Spy came, with some hesitation, in answer to a whistle which was like his master’s, but not exactly the same. His master soon set him to work, and began to work himself, in a sort of desperation. It was astonishing what a clearance was made in a short time. But it did not do all the good that was expected. There was so much vegetable decay in the region round, that the floating dead animals off to a distance caused only a partial relief.
While the boys were hard at work at their disagreeable task, Mildred was enjoying seeing George in his warm bath. Ailwin held him there, while Mildred continued her useful business of filtering water, talking to the child all the while. The poor little fellow soon left off crying, and moved his weak limbs about in the tepid water, trying to splash Ailwin, as he had been wont to splash his mother in play, every morning when she washed and dressed him.
“I am sure it does him a great deal of good,” exclaimed Mildred. “I will filter quantities of water; and he shall have a bath as often as ever it is good for him. Suppose it should make him well!”
Ailwin shook her head. She saw how impossible it would be even to keep a healthy child well in the absence of proper food, in an unwholesome atmosphere, and without sufficient shelter from the changes of weather which might come at any hour, and must come soon. How unlikely it was that a sick baby should recover under such circumstances, she was well aware. Yet she little thought how near the end was.
After his bath, Geordie lay, nicely covered up, on a mattress under the tent. One or other of his nurses visited, him every few minutes; and both were satisfied that he was comfortably asleep. The boys came for some dinner, at last; and while Oliver went to wash his hands in clean water, Roger stooped over the child to kiss him. Before doing so, however, he started back, and asked Ailwin why the baby’s eyes looked so strangely. They were half closed, and seemed like neither sleep nor waking. Ailwin sat down on the mattress, and took him into her arms, while Mildred ran to call Oliver. The poor child stretched himself stiff across Ailwin’s knees, and then breathed no more.
When Oliver and Mildred came running back, Ailwin was putting her cheek near the child’s mouth, to feel if there was indeed no breath. She shook her head, and her eyes ran over with tears. Oliver kneeled down, and put his hand to the heart—it did not beat. He lifted the wasted arm—it fell, as if it had never had life in it. There lay the little body, still unmoved, with the face composed,—the eyes dim and half closed, the ear hearing nothing, the tongue silent, while all were calling on little George to say something he had been fond of saying, to hearken to something he had loved to hear, and—all in vain.
“Whistle to him, Roger!” exclaimed Mildred, through her trembling. “Try if he cannot hear that. Whistle to him softly.”
Roger tried; but no notice was taken of the forced, irregular whistle which was the best he could give at the moment.