He stopped inflating the globe, and answered,—
“Ai! she doesn’t dream of it. What is working under thy hair? But it is natural for her to be anxious; she would rather have thee well.”
“Why are all other children well, and I alone always sick?”
“Nicely well! Weren’t the Bigiel children sick, one after another, with whooping-cough? For whole months the house was like a sheepfold. And didn’t Yozio have the measles? All children are eternally sick, and that is the one pleasure with them.”
“Pan Stas only talks that way, for children are sick and get well again.” Here she began to shake her head. “No; that is something different. And now I must lie this way all the time, for if I get up my heart beats right away; and the day before yesterday, when they began to sing on the street, and mamma wasn’t in the room, I went to the window a little while, and saw a funeral. I thought, ‘I, too, shall die surely.’”
“Nonsense, Litus!” cried Pan Stanislav; and he began to inflate the globe quickly to hide his emotion, and to show the child how little her words meant. But she went on with her thought,—
“It is so stifling for me sometimes, and my heart beats so—mamma told me to say then ‘Under Thy protection,’ and I say it always, for I am terribly afraid to die! I know that it is nice in heaven, but I shouldn’t be with mamma, only alone in the graveyard; yes, in the night.”
Pan Stanislav laid down the globe suddenly, sat near the long chair, and, taking Litka’s hand, said,—
“My Litus, if thou love mamma, if thou love me, do not think of such things. Nothing will happen to thee; but thy mother would suffer if she knew what her little girl’s head is filled with. Remember that thou art hurting thyself in this way.”
Litka joined her hands: “My Pan Stas, I ask only one thing, not more.”