"Do you mean God really wanted to be my Friend all along?" questioned the boy earnestly.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Power, "that is the comfort of it. Just say to yourself, 'God loves me,' and ask Him to wash away your sins, and to keep you for Jesus Christ's sake. Only a Friend can love, Julius, so you need not be afraid of Him."
"God loves me," repeated the child. "God loves me. He was my Friend all along, only I didn't know."
He closed his eyes contentedly, and nestled his head into the pillow. Mrs. Power held his hands in hers for a few minutes longer, and then gently laid them down upon the bed. "I think he is sleeping," she whispered, as she rose to her feet.
The nurse nodded silently with a pleased smile, and Madelaine noiselessly left the room.
Many an anxious hour was still to come as Julius slowly struggled back to health and strength, but as the doctor said, it was to that sleep the child owed his life. There were no more objections made by Mr. Field to the intercourse between Farncourt and the dwellers in Sea View Cottage. Every morning did Robin and his mother walk up to enquire for the invalid, and as often as not, one or both of them stayed with him for the rest of the day. Mr. Field indeed was not often present when Mrs. Power sat with his son, but he would constantly join the two boys as they played together, watching them as they made endless scrapbooks out of old illustrated papers, or constructed wonderful models with bits of wood and an unlimited supply of glue.
The great London physician came no longer to look wisely over his gold-rimmed spectacles at the now convalescent lad, but the village doctor still made friendly visits, to the benefit of his patient as well as of his own pocket.
"We'll soon have you flying about as lively as ever," he said cheerily to Julius during one of these calls. "You've got on quicker than the other patient I was summoned to attend the same day that you got bowled over."
"Who was that?" asked Mrs. Power, who was standing near. "I had not heard that any of the villagers were ill just now."
"I know how good you are in going to see the sick ones," responded the doctor, "and I longed to ask you to minister to this poor fellow, but he's a queer self-contained mortal, and apparently prefers to be left to himself. He is a stranger here--arrived the night of the storm--and appeared, sopping wet and utterly tired out at Mrs. Potter's door, with no luggage but a knapsack, being apparently upon some sort of walking tour. She let him in out of pity, and he's been laid up at her house ever since. It's the Mrs. Potter who lives on the high road just beyond the wood. She's a good soul, and has done all she could for him, but it's been a close shave, his getting through at all."