CHAPTER XXIII
RESTORATION
Notwithstanding the fact that the lost packet was restored, Betty’s life hung in the balance for at least another twenty-four hours. During that time she tossed and sighed and groaned. The fever ran high, and her little voice kept on saying, “Oh, that I could find the packet!”
It was in this emergency that Miss Symes came to the rescue. She called Sylvia and Hester to her, and desired Hester to stand at one side of Betty’s little, narrow, white bed, and Sylvia to place herself at the other.
Betty did not seem even to know her sisters. Her eyes were glassy, her cheeks deeply flushed, and there was a look of intense restlessness and great pain in her face. “Oh, that I might find the packet!” she murmured.
“Do what your heart prompts you, Sylvia,” said Miss Symes.
Sylvia immediately pushed her hand under Betty’s pillow, and, taking up the lost packet, took one of the girl’s little, feverish hands and closed her fingers round the brown-paper parcel.
“It is found, Bettina! it is found!” said Sylvia. “Here it is. You need not fret any more.”
“What! what!” said Betty. Into her eyes there crept a new expression, into her voice a new note. “Oh, I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed.