WHEN THE LITTLE LADY FELL ILL
Anonymous
“Once upon a time,” there was a little lady, gentle and sweet. One day she sent for the doctor. She was ill. She lay upon her bed with her bronze hair afloat upon the pillow. She smiled as the doctor came in and held out a hand tiny and soft and very white. Her teeth shone between her crimson lips and there were beautiful violet lights in her brown eyes. She was always full of life and spirit. Now here she was in bed and sending for the doctor, she who had almost never before needed a doctor. A great operation was decided upon. She only asked how long she would be out of the sun. They thought the operation would heal. But it did not—and there was another and another. For a little while after each operation she did get back to the sun and was very happy, just as a butterfly might be.
But at last they who watched knew that the frail little body could not withstand another operation and that the end was near—very near. Then came the fourteenth day of December, when, they told the young doctor, it was his duty to tell the little butterfly. That night he walked the streets—all the long night. It rained. But he did not feel it. In the morning he understood why some must die, for in the rain and the night he had unconsciously been with the God who gives and who takes away. He went, gaunt with the night’s agony, but smiling, and took the two little hands into his.
“Did you ever wonder,” he asked her, “as I have, why God gives life only to take it away?”
“Just for love,” she smiled. “He wants the best Himself.”
“Do you know,” he said, “that you are very ill?”
“Am I?” she said, suddenly turning her great, startled eyes upon him.
“Haven’t you noticed,” he tried to go on, “that you—”