“Can you save it? Must you ampu—”
Before the word was completed the surgeon’s hand was over her lips, Whitey brought to the door with a bang, and three pale faces stared at each other in consternation. Had Sylvia heard? Could she have overheard? That was the question which was agitating every mind. They strained their ears for a cry from the sick-room, but no cry came. Whitey looked at the doctor and made a movement towards the door, and he bent his head in assent.
“Yes! Go in as if you had forgotten something. She may have fainted. Poor child, it was enough to make her!”
Tears of remorse were standing in Aunt Margaret’s eyes, but she waited silently enough now while Whitey re-entered the room and strolled across to the window to pick up the book in which she wrote the daily report. She smiled at Sylvia as she passed, and Sylvia looked at her quietly, quite quietly, and the dark eyes showed no signs of tears. Whitey went back to the doctors with lightened face, and eased their minds by a definite assurance.
“She heard nothing. She is lying quite still and composed. She cannot possibly have heard.”
They turned and went downstairs to the dining-room. Sylvia heard their footsteps die away in the distance, the opening and shutting of the door. The brown eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy, the hot hands were clasped tightly together beneath the sheet.
“God,” she was crying deep down in her soul, “do You really mean it? I’ve been very wicked often, I’ve forgotten You and taken my own way, but I’m so young—only twenty-one—don’t make me lame! I’ll be good, I’ll think of other people, I’ll be grateful all my life. Don’t make me lame! Think what it means to a girl like me to lose her foot! I have no mother, nor brothers, nor sisters, and father is far-away. It would be so dreadful to be shut up here and never, never run about any more. Have pity on me. Don’t make me lame!”
It was a cry from the depths of her heart, very different from the formal prayers which she was accustomed to offer morning and evening—a plea for help such as she would have addressed to her dear earthly father in any of the minor difficulties of life, but in this great crisis of her fate she must needs go straight to the fountain of comfort—the Great Physician who was able to save the soul as well as the body.
All the rest of the day, as she lay so quietly on her pillows, she was talking to Him, pleading for deliverance, setting forth pathetic girlish arguments why she should be spared the coming trial. When the thought arose of many others younger than herself who were leading maimed lives, she thrust the memory aside as something which could not be faced, and her lips refused to utter the words which she had been taught to affix to her petitions. “‘Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.’ I can’t say it, Lord. I can’t mean it!” she cried tremblingly. “Not yet! Forgive me, and be patient with me. I’m so frightened!” and even as the prayer went up, the assurance came into her soul that the Heavenly Father would understand, and show towards her the divinest of sympathy and patience.
For some reason which she would have found difficult to explain to herself Sylvia felt an intense disinclination to let her attendants know what she had overheard. She perceived that they were more than usually tender towards herself, and they on their part were puzzled by the quiet of the once restless patient. She grumbled no more about small unpleasantnesses—oh, how small they seemed! She was content to lie still and think her own thoughts, and seemed to have lost all interest in the ordinary events of the day.