Kate blushed and nodded. She did not care to reveal all she had suffered at the hands and feet of Rodie, or she would have told the doctor that far from having caught cold she had caught it very hot indeed. A bottle of medicine was quickly put up and labelled, and Kate was free to depart.
Billy was in high spirits, and danced and pranced all the way home, quite sure that the magic elixir which was to banish all pain from Kate’s poor breast was in the bottle she carried. When they got home they found to their great relief that the house was still empty, and after Kate had taken a spoonful of the medicine they hid the bottle away under their bed, lest the comical fiend should jokingly throw it out at the window. The medicine thus applied for and taken in stealth had the effect of soothing the pain somewhat and easing the cough, but it did not stop the decay of Kate’s lungs. She got weaker and thinner, till at last even the comical fiend confessed his ingenuity and skill in forcing her out of bed quite exhausted and at fault. Kate spent most of her time in bed in the hole under the slates, while Billy became housewife and nurse combined. Strange thoughts came into her head, and half of the time she was in a hazy dream, through which she saw little but Billy’s eager face as he tended, and nursed, and soothed, and consoled, and tried every device for keeping the comical fiend out of the hole. One morning, while Rodie and Joss were still snoring in bed, Kate was more wide awake than she had seemed for a long time, and startled Billy, as she had often done of late, with one of her odd questions—
“Wouldn’t it be nice, Billy, if I was to fall asleep, and sleep on and never wake?”
Billy stared at her and tried to realise the thought.
“It wouldn’t be nice for me,” he said at last, “for I couldn’t get speaking to you. You’d be the same as dead.”
“Well, what becomes of folks when they’re dead?” pursued Kate. “I heard a man say once that there’s another world they go to, all bright and beautiful, where there’s no pain. I’d like to be there, if there’s such a place.”
Billy didn’t think there was such a place—at least, he had never heard of it, and anyhow he did not wish Kate to die. His heart gave a great pang as he thought for the first time of what it would be to be left in the world—alone—without Kate, and he choked and gulped and would have cried, if it had not been that he did not wish to excite or alarm her.
“But, Billy, I sometimes in my dreams see a hole in the ground, with a light shining through from the other side,” persisted Kate. “I see it often, and always want to go into it.”
“There ain’t no such hole,” said Billy, sturdily and determinedly.
“There may be if I die and am put in the ground,” said Kate, wearily. “Sometimes I’m so tired that I can hardly wake up again. But, Billy, how would I find the road to the other place if I should fall asleep and not wake again? I’ve heard it’s not easy found, and I think it’s only a place for good folks, and we’re not that, you know.”