“You mustn’t forget, my dear, to ask the True Physician to help you.” She lifted up her head and was just about to git out of bed agin, and I sez, “You can ask Him right where you be, for He don’t mind; what He minds is the true reverence of the soul—the dependent call for help from them that need His care and who believes He can help ’em.”
“Yes, mom,” sez she; “I always say my prayers every night.”
“Well,” sez I, “so do.” And I kissed her and couldn’t help it. I wuz beginnin’ to like her the best that ever wuz. But jest as I wuz leavin’ the room she looked up anxiously with her big blue eyes and sez, “Oh, Aunt Samantha, won’t you close the window at the foot of the bed and the one in the next room?” That wuz another little bedroom that opened out of hers and I used it for a clothes-press.
“Why,” sez I, “Honey, the wind couldn’t touch you at all if there wuz any; your bed is out of the range on’t; but,” sez I, goin’ into the next room and bringin’ out a big screen (one I made myself out of the old ironin’ bars and some pretty cretonne), “here,” sez I, “I’ll put this between your bed and the winder, and you couldn’t git cold in a cyclone, much less in this sweet June air that comes up fresh from the heart of Nater and brings a touch of her own healin’ and rest with it.”
But she looked frightened still, most as if she’d faint away, and sez she, “Mamma told me special to have you cork the windows up tight if there wuz any airholes round ’em.”
“Cork ’em up,” sez I mekanically, “I would fur ruther oncork ’em,” sez I, and I went on, “What is the reason for her desire for corkin’?”
“The night air is so deadly,” sez she; “Mamma is so much afraid of it that she never has dared to let a breath of it come to me after I wuz in bed.”
“Why,” sez I reasonably, “what air could you breathe in the night, only night air; and do you spoze,” sez I, “that the Lord would fix things so as to have us breathe deadly pizen half of our time? Why, you don’t have to go into algebra to figger it out; in the night time you’ve got to breathe the night air; you can’t git any other, and it stands to reason that you’d better breathe it fresh from the hand that made it—good oxygen, etc., than to take it pizened with all sorts of pizen risin’ from the prespirin’ skin, weak lungs and stomach, coal gas, etc.”
Well, agin her good disposition come in and fetched her through this crisis. She settled down agin into the bed with a kind of a patient sithe, though I could see that she wuz as afraid of that air as if it wuz wild beasts ready to devour her, yet lookin’ some relieved at the apple-blows and mornin’ glories that twined round all over that screen as if they wuz some protection to her.
I bent down and kissed her agin and she kissed me back, and I went to bed. But I’ll bet I got up most a dozen times and went to her door and listened, and once in a while I could hear her give a kind of a low mourn or sithe. But I didn’t dast to let her know that I wuz there for fear of wakin’ her clear up, and I spozed goin’ to bed at such a different hour and so many new idees bein’ promulgated to her would naterally upset her, but I kinder worried about her all night.