The Children's Pilgrimage

by L. T. Meade

"You set there, Maurice," he said, now addressing the bewildered little boy; "Cecile is ill; and you must not leave her. You set quite close to her, and when she asks for it, let her have a drink of water; and, Toby, you take care on them both."

"But, Joe, I'm starving hungry," said Maurice; "and why must I stay alone when Cecile is so queer, and not a bit glad to see me, though she is calling for me all the time? Why are you going away? I think 'tis very nasty of you, Joe."

"I must go, Maurice; I must find a doctor for Cecile; the reason Cecile goes on like that is because she is so dreadful ill. Ef I don't get a doctor, why she'll die like my little comrade died when his leg wor broke. You set nigh her, Maurice, and yere's a bit of bread."

Then Joe, going up to the sick child and kneeling down by her, took one of the burning hands in his.

"Missie, Missie, dear," he said, "I know as yer desperate ill, and you can't understand me. But still I'd like fur to say as I give hup my old mother, Missie. I wor starving fur my mother, and I thought as I'd see her soon, soon. But it worn't fur to be. I'm goin' back to my master and the old life, and you shall have the purse o' gold. I did bitter, bitter wrong; but I'll do right now. So good-by, my darling darlin' little Missie Cecile."

As the poor boy spoke he stooped down and kissed the burning hands, and looked longingly at the strangely flushed and altered face; then he went out into the forest. Any action was a relief to his oppressed and overstrained heart, and he knew he had not a moment to lose in trying to find a doctor for Cecile.

He went straight to the village and inquired if such a person dwelt there.

"Yes," an old peasant woman told him; "certainly they had a doctor, but he was out just now; he was with Mme. Chillon up at a farm a mile away. There was no use in going to the doctor's house, but if the boy would follow him there, to the said farm, he might catch him before he went farther away, for there were to be festivities that night, and their good doctor was always in requisition as the best dancer in the place."

So Joe followed the doctor to the farm a mile away, and was so fortunate as to find him just before he was about to ride off to the fete mentioned by the old peasant.

Joe, owing to his long residence in England, could only speak broken French, but his agitation, his great earnestness, what little French he could muster, were so far eloquent as to induce the young doctor, instead of postponing his visit to the hut in the forest until the morning, to decide to give up his dance and go with the boy instead.