The next night Dr. Greene waited also by that bedside for the crisis he foresaw. At last the child slept.
"When she wakes we shall know what to expect," he said, and went away into the next room for a little rest. But the father and the aunt never moved. It was midnight, and every thing was strangely, unnaturally still, as it always seems to watchers in the middle of the night, when they heard Agatha call out of the hush and the stillness, with a sudden, glad cry of recognition,—
"O mamma! mamma!"
"Is she dying?" Mr. Raymond's look asked, for his lips refused to speak, and his sister's face made answer, "Not yet."
The hours, the long, slow hours went on. The night grew darker and deeper. Then above the hills there stretched a faint line of dawn-light which deepened at length to rose, and then was shot through by a golden arrow from the rising sun. And then, as the dawning glory touched the little white, still face upon the pillows, the eyes opened, and a voice—Agatha's own natural voice, but oh, so faint and low!—said, softly but gladly,—
"I have seen mamma. I wanted to go with her, but she said papa and Aunt Irene both needed me, and I was to stay here and grow well and happy. And so I shall."
"And so, please God, you shall," Dr. Greene said, cheerily, having come in from the next room; and the father sank upon his knees by the bedside, with some murmured words, which only the Father in heaven understood, upon his lips; and Aunt Irene hurried off, she said, to get something for the child to take, but she stopped a long time upon the way.
"I knew you were here, papa," and Agatha reached out her thin little fingers to touch the bowed head beside her. "I knew, because mamma told me."