“How long has she been asleep?” whispered Jerome.
“'Most an hour. You don't s'pose mother's goin' to die too, do you, Jerome?”
“Course she ain't.”
“I never saw her go to sleep in the daytime before. Mother don't act a mite like herself. She 'ain't spoke out to me once this mornin',” poor little Elmira whimpered; but her brother hushed her, angrily.
“Don't you know enough to keep still—a great big girl like you?” he said.
“Jerome, I have. I 'ain't cried a mite before her, and she couldn't hear that,” whispered Elmira, chokingly.
“Mother's got awful sharp ears, you know she has,” insisted Jerome. “Now I'm goin' away, and don't you let anybody come in here while I'm gone and bother mother.”
“I'll have to let Cousin Paulina Maria and Aunt Belinda in, if they come,” said Elmira, staring at him wonderingly. Neither she nor her mother knew that Paulina Maria had already been there and been turned away.
“You just lock the house up, and not go to the door,” said Jerome, decisively.
Elmira kept staring at him, as if she doubted her eyes and ears. She felt a certain awe of her brother. “Where you goin'?” she inquired, half timidly.