“Yes; mamma made her sleep, and you, and nurse. She sent all of you the dreams you like best; and all night long she sat here beside my bed, with her hand on my head, just as she used to put it long ago. She was all in white, and her hair fell about her shoulders, and her eyes were very, very bright, and her lips, when she kissed me, seemed somehow to melt away.”
“So you, too, dreamed about mamma, darling?”
“No, indeed, papa, I did not dream. Mamma sat there all night long, with her hand upon my head. Sometimes I slept, but more often I woke up to look at her; and all the time she sat there, and did not tire, until the first sunshine came in at the windows; and then she kissed me and went away. I did not see her go. Perhaps I shut my eyes a moment. Then I looked and she was gone, and then I heard you coming in. She said she was with me every day, but she couldn’t have come to me like this, except because I needed her so very, very much. And she wanted to make me well, because you would grieve for me if I came to her; and I was to be very good, and tend you and make you comfortable; and I must laugh and must make you laugh, for laughter was good, and the reason I got ill was because I had been sorry so long, and had not laughed at all. And I was not to be sorry after her any more, because she was very happy, and nothing grieved her except when she saw you and me mourning for her, and not knowing that she was waiting close beside us.”
“Was it her mother? Can it be it was the child’s mother?” the father cried, uttering his thought aloud unconsciously.
“Of course it was mamma; and she has made me well. See if Dr. Dale does not tell you I am well.”
Two hours afterward Dr. Dale came. He stood for a few moments beside the little bed. He looked in the child’s glad eyes, he counted the throbs of her pulse, he made her put out her healthy little tongue. Then he turned to her father.
“Trevethick,” he said, “can you swear that this is the same little girl I left here last night? If the days of miracles were not gone by, I should say that one had been wrought here. I left, I thought, a very sick little person, about whom I was anxious enough, certainly, to make this my first call this morning; and I find my small patient so well that I shall only keep her in bed a day or two longer, for form’s sake.”
“Perhaps it is a miracle,” Colonel Trevethick said, smiling. But he did not explain. There are some experiences too marvellous for belief and too sacred for doubt or question, and that was one of them.
Two days afterward little Maudie went down to tea. She wore a fresh white gown, with lovely blue ribbons, and looked as much like a little angel in festal attire as a human child can be expected to look. But she did not take her usual seat. She sat down, instead, behind the tea-pot, where Bessie usually stood to pour out the tea.
“Hadn’t Bessie better do that?” papa asked, as he saw the little hand close round the handle of the tea-pot.