“‘Oh, don’t tell him’—that was all her thought—‘don’t let him know it. Tell him I’m strong, won’t you, nurse? It will kill him if he thinks I’m not getting well.’
“I was glad when her sister came up, and I could get out of the room, for you’re not much good at nursing when you feel, as I felt then, as though you had swallowed a tablespoon and it was sticking in your throat.
“Later on, when I went in to him, he drew me to the bedside, and whispered me to tell him truly how she was. If you are telling a lie at all, you may just as well make it a good one, so I told him she was really wonderfully well, only a little exhausted after the illness, as was natural, and that I expected to have her up before him.
“Poor lad! that lie did him more good than a week’s doctoring and nursing; and next morning he called out more cheerily than ever to her, and offered to bet her a new bonnet against a new hat that he would race her, and be up first.
“She laughed back quite merrily (I was in his room at the time). ‘All right,’ she said, ‘you’ll lose. I shall be well first, and I shall come and visit you.’
“Her laugh was so bright, and her voice sounded so much stronger, that I really began to think she had taken a turn for the better, so that when on going in to her I found her pillow wet with tears, I could not understand it.
“‘Why, we were so cheerful just a minute ago,’ I said; ‘what’s the matter?’
“‘Oh, poor Jack!’ she moaned, as her little, wasted fingers opened and closed upon the counterpane. ‘Poor Jack, it will break his heart.’
“It was no good my saying anything. There comes a moment when something tells your patient all that is to be known about the case, and the doctor and the nurse can keep their hopeful assurances for where they will be of more use. The only thing that would have brought comfort to her then would have been to convince her that he would soon forget her and be happy without her. I thought it at the time, and I tried to say something of the kind to her, but I couldn’t get it out, and she wouldn’t have believed me if I had.
“So all I could do was to go back to the other room, and tell him that I wanted her to go to sleep, and that he must not call out to her until I told him.