“But it doesn’t look well,” said Margaret to the mother.
“No, missie, nor ’tain’t well neither,” replied the woman; “and I have one inside a deal worser. I don’t know what ails ’em. Would yer like to step inside and see the child?”
Margaret ran up the steps without a moment’s hesitation, and found a poor sick boy about seven years old stretched upon a hard mattress, tossing from side to side in what was evidently a bad fever. The good-hearted child said to the woman,—“I am sure your little boy is very ill; I will run home and ask mother what you had better do for him.”
She hurried home full of the subject, and I was sitting in the garden when she came running in. I asked the reason of her haste, when she told me of the sick children. From her description, the idea at once occurred to me that they were sick with scarlet fever; and the parish doctor, whom we asked to go to see them, afterwards confirmed my opinion.
Those children, however, struggled through the terrible illness; but, alas! our little Margaret—I say our because a strong love had grown up in my heart for the good and pretty child—sickened with the fever, which she had caught during those few minutes spent in the fever-stricken cart. Days of wearing anxiety and nights of watching followed. It was heart-breaking to see the little head rolling from side to side upon the pillow, while the pretty eyes looked with unmeaning gaze upon us all: the voice too, that we had so loved to hear, sounded strange as it talked in the wild delirium of fever.
After a time the fever abated, and the child became more tranquil, though weaker. One day some sad words fell from the little parched lips: “Mother dear,” she said, “set me up a little; I want to see out of the window, and say good-bye to everything.”
The poor mother raised her up, and Margaret could see the soft evening sky, and the outside world just melting into twilight under the warm smile of the setting sun.
“Is it, as they say, mother, more beautiful there?” she whispered, pointing to the sky.
“Where, darling?” asked her mother.
“In heaven,” said the child, “which I shall see so soon.”