More Bed-Time Stories

by Louise Chandler Moulton

I saw the quick dew suffuse my mother's eyes, as she made some answer which I failed to hear, and then went to the door with her guest.

Am I to tell all the sad and bitter truth? I understood, as well as they did, that they thought our Lily so frail we should have hard work to make her flourish in the cold soil of the earth; and for one moment a feeling of evil triumph swelled my heart. When she was gone, I should be all to my father and mother, as I used to be before she came. They would love me, when they had no one else to love.

I felt a guilty flush mounting to my cheeks, and I swept my map into its box hastily, and got up to leave the room. As I went out of the door Lily's voice followed me, sweetly shrill,—"Nan! Nan! Nan!" and, for the very first time in my life, a conviction smote me that there would be a sense of loss when that voice could never follow me again, with its soft calling, through all the years.

The next summer was a strange, warm, oppressive summer,—the summer of '56. With its July heats our Lily began to droop. Such care as she had, such nursing, such love! But she had been always like a blossom from heaven, sprung up by mistake in the rough soil of this world, and she needed for her healing the wind which blows for ever through the leaves of the tree of life.

She soon grew so weak that she could not run about any more, but would lie all day, except when, for a change, my mother held her in her arms, in a little rose-curtained crib, out from which the blue, wistful eyes followed all our movements, with a sweet, loving, lingering look, which I cannot describe. On me, in especial, that long gaze used to rest; and never could I leave the room without that sweet, small voice calling after me plaintively.

There came a day, at last, when the doctor sat half an hour by Lily's side, watching her with grave, silent face, and then went into another room alone with my mother. He came out first, and went away, and when she followed him, her eyes were very red. I knew afterwards, what I suspected the moment I saw her face, that he had been telling her that she must make up her mind to part with her little darling.

My heart was not quite stone, after all, for it grew strangely soft and strangely afraid then. She was going home to God, this little Lily of heaven; and would she tell Him that I had hated, all through, the baby sister He had given me? I went away by myself and prayed. I had said my prayers night and morning, all my life, but this was quite another thing, this cry of the child's heart becoming conscious of its guilt and woe, to the pitying Father.

At last, I went to my mother. Lily was asleep, and mamma sat by her side, pale as death, but with face that made no complaint. I knelt down beside her.

"O mother!" I cried, "I have been so wicked,—and now I cannot undo it! Oh, if I could! Oh, if I could only die,—I who am not fit to live,—and let you keep Lily!"