"O, my flower, my angel, my life!" she cried, flinging herself down beside the child's bed; "I cannot lose you!"
"I trust in God you will not," said the surgeon. "We will make every effort to save him." And then he turned to Jane Target, and murmured his directions.
"Is there any one else," said Clarissa in a hoarse voice, looking up at the medical man—"anyone I can send for besides yourself—any one who can cure my baby?"
"I doubt whether it would be of any use. The case is such a simple one. I have fifty such in a year. But if you would like a physician to see the little fellow, there is Dr. Ormond, who has peculiar experience in children's cases. You might call him in, if you liked."
"I will send for him this minute.—Jane, dear, will you go?"
"I don't think it would be any use, just now. He will be out upon his rounds. There is no immediate danger. If you were to send to him this evening—a note would do—asking him to call to-morrow—that would be the best way. Remember, I don't for a moment say the case is hopeless. Only, if you have any anxiety about the little one's father, and if he is within a day's journey, I would really advise you to send for him."
Clarissa did not answer. She was hanging over the bed, watching every difficult breath with unutterable agony. The child had only begun to droop a week ago, had been positively ill only four days.
All the rest of that day Clarissa was in a kind of stupor. She watched the child, and watched Jane administering her remedies, and the landlady coming in now and then to look at the boy, or to ask about him with a friendly anxiety. She tried to help Jane sometimes, in a useless tremulous way, sometimes sat statue-like, and could only gaze. She could not even pray—only now and then, she whispered with her dry lips, "Surely God will not take away my child!"
At dusk the doctor came again, but said very little. He was leaving the room, when Clarissa stopped him with a passionate despairing cry. Until that moment she had seemed marble.
"Tell me the truth," she cried. "Will he be taken away from me? He is all the world to me—the only thing on earth I have to love. Surely God will not be so pitiless! What difference can one angel more make in heaven? and he is all the world to me."