It began to rain before they were half way. Myron's thoughts turned to Homer. She never forgot him for long at a time. It falls to the lot of few to be so sincerely sorrowed for.
She and My were both wet through when they reached the cottage, and Myron was very weary with the boy's weight. She lit the fire, and My played about in the kitchen. He was of a peculiarly sunny and equable disposition—
"One of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
The world would smell like what it is—a tomb."
Myron was glad when the time came for bed, for she was utterly weary.
The old clock on the wall was pointing to one o'clock, when Myron suddenly started up, wide awake. The mother instinct, keener than her other faculties, had awakened her, not the boy. For the strange, low, gurgling sound he made would scarce have aroused the lightest sleeper, and Myron had been sunk in the deep sleep of exhaustion.
In a moment she had the lamp alight. The boy lay, his blue eyes wide open, his round cheeks scarlet with the fatal flush of fever, his lips swollen and parted in gasping respirations, his body almost rigid with the efforts he made for breath. One glance showed her this. The next instant she was undoing the little nightdress and shirt. With tremulous haste she placed some goose-grease in a little tin and strove to melt it by holding it over the lamp. The light was weak and wavering. She removed the chimney, and thrust the cup into the flame. Her fingers scorched till the skin cracked; she did not know it. She applied the melted oil and flew to wet his parched lips. The horrible, croupy cough cut her to the heart as it issued from My's swollen throat. She used every remedy her homely skill suggested, some of them efficacious enough often—but little My was dying. His blue eyes were filming; his baby lips twitching; the little hands, that had of late grasped her fingers so firmly as to suggest protection, made wavering, feeble movements toward her face and bosom, or clutched with waning strength at his own tortured throat.
She knelt beside the bed. She hardly dared touch the little form before her lest the mother in her, which had grown fierce in her dread, should cause her to clasp it too close. She lifted her voice in prayer, and cried aloud in frightful accents of despair, entreaty, expostulation, nay, even of threatening. No prayer more eloquent of human agony ever beat against deaf skies, yet it was but the repetition of one word—"My—My!"
An hour crept by. The flush had deepened on My's cheeks; his eyes were glazed. Once again, in surpassing pain, Myron Holder called aloud her child's name. There came no heavenly answer; but the true little heart, beating so faintly, responded once more to the beloved voice. Little My's eyes cleared a space and his fingers closed round his mother's.
"My's mama!" He uttered the alliterative little babble in strange, shackled tones. The woman—his mother—felt a stricture at her throat; she strove in vain to force it down as she answered:
"Mama's My."