“Dear, sweet pet, we must do all we can to amuse her,” sighed the fond mother.
Mild as the case might be, the patient had to suffer thirst and headache, a dry and swollen throat, and restless nights. Her most eager desire was for Fay’s company, and as it was ascertained that Fay had suffered from scarlet fever some years before in a somewhat severe form, it was considered she might safely assist in the sick-room.
She was there almost all day, and very often in the night. She read to Mildred, and sang to her, and played with her, and indulged every changing fancy and caprice of sickness. Her love was inexhaustible, indefatigable, for ever on the watch. If Mildred woke from a feverish dream in the deep of night, with a little agitated sob or cry, she found a figure in a white dressing-gown bending over her, and loving arms encircling her before she had time to feel frightened. Fay slept in a little dressing-room opening out of Mildred’s large, airy bedroom, so as to be near her darling. It was a mere closet, with a truckle-bed brought down from the servants’ attic; but it was good enough for Fay, whose only thought was of the child who loved her as none other had ever loved within her memory.
Mrs. Fausset was prettily anxious about her child. She would come to Mildred’s room in her dressing-gown before her leisurely morning toilet, to hear the last report. She would sit by the bed for five minutes showering kisses on the pale cheeks, and then she would go away to her long summer-day of frivolous pleasures and society talk. Ripples of laughter and snatches of speech came floating in at the open windows; and at Mildred’s behest Fay would stand at a window and report the proceedings of that happy world outside.
“They are going out in the boat. They are going to have tea on the lawn. Your mamma is walking up and down with Sir Horace Clavering. Miss Grenville and her sister are playing croquet;” and so on, and so on, all day.
Mildred tossed about on her pretty white bed impatiently.
“It is very horrid being shut up here on these fine days,” she said; “or it would be horrid without you, Fay. Mamma does not come to see me much.”
Mamma came three or four times a day; but her visits were of the briefest. She would come into the room beaming with smiles, looking like living sunlight in her exquisite white gown, with its delicate ribbons and cloudy lace—a fleecy white cloud just touched with rose-colour, as if she were an embodiment of the summer dawn. Sometimes she brought Mildred a peach, or a bunch of hothouse grapes, or an orchid, or a new picture-book; but beautiful as these offerings were, the child did not always value them. She would push the plate of grapes or the peach aside impatiently when her mother was gone, or she would entreat Fay to eat the dainty.
“Mamma thinks I am greedy,” she said; “but I ain’t, am I, Fay?”
Those three weeks in the sick-room, those wakeful nights and long, slow summer days, strengthened the bond of love between the two girls. By the time Mildred was convalescent they seemed to have loved each other for years. Mildred could hardly remember what her life was like before she had Fay for a companion. Mrs. Fausset saw this growing affection not without jealousy; but it was very convenient that there should be some one in the house whose companionship kept Mildred happy, and she even went so far as to admit that Fay was “useful.”