“They must, they must,” said Sahwah, with dry lips.
“They must,” echoed the others, and hardly daring to think, they entered upon the trying period of waiting.
CHAPTER XVII
WAITING
“How is Sylvia?” Katherine’s voice was husky with anxiety.
Nyoda looked grave over the tray she was carrying down to the kitchen. “No better yet; a little worse this morning, if anything. Her fever has gone up one degree during the night and she is coughing more than ever.”
“Is it going to be pneumonia?” asked Katherine steadily, her eyes searching Nyoda’s face.
“Not if I can help it,” replied Nyoda, in a tone of grim determination, the light of battle sparkling in her eyes. Nevertheless, there was a note of worry in her voice that struck cold fear into Katherine’s heart, stoutly optimistic as she was. What if Sylvia should die before her father came back? The other Winnebagos, clustering around Nyoda to hear the latest news from Sylvia’s bedside, stood hushed and solemn. Nyoda set the tray down on the table and leaned wearily against the door, her eyes heavy from lack of sleep. Instantly Migwan was at her side, all solicitude.
“Go, lie down and sleep awhile, Nyoda,” she urged. “You’ve been up nearly all night. I can look after Sylvia for a few hours—I know how. Go to bed now and we’ll bring some breakfast up to you, and then you can go to sleep.” Putting her arm around Nyoda she led her upstairs and tucked her into bed, smoothing the covers over her with gentle, motherly hands, while the girls below prepared a dainty breakfast tray.
“Nice—child!” murmured Nyoda, from the depths of her pillow. “Nice—old—Migwan! Always—taking—care—of—someone!” Her voice trailed off in a tired whisper, and by the time the breakfast tray arrived she was sound asleep.
Sylvia also slept most of the time that Migwan watched beside her, a fitful slumber broken by many coughing spells and intervals of difficult breathing. Never had Sylvia seemed so beautiful and so princesslike to Migwan as when she lay there sleeping in the big four-poster bed, her shining curls spread out on the pillow and her fever-flushed cheeks glowing like roses. Lying there so still, with her delicate little white hand resting on top of the coverlet, she brought to Migwan’s mind Goethe’s description of the beautiful, dead Mignon, in whom the vivid tints of life had been counterfeited by skillful hands. To Migwan’s lively imagination it seemed that Sylvia was another Mignon, this child of lofty birth and breeding also cast by accident among humble surroundings, and singing her way into the hearts of people. Would it be with her as it had been with Mignon; would she never be reunited in life with her own people? The resemblance between the two lives struck Migwan as a prophecy and her heart chilled with the conviction that Sylvia was going to die. Tears stole down her cheek as she saw, in her mind’s eye, the father coming in just too late, and their beautiful, radiant Sylvia lying cold and still, her joyful song forever hushed.