“Oh, I am glad, ma!” said the sick man.
After that the nurse was well content with them all. They obeyed her implicitly. It was she rather than Mrs. Raker who observed that Mr. Smith’s mother was not alone, but accompanied by a slim, fair, brown-eyed young woman, who lingered in the background, and would fain have not spoken to the invalid at all had she not been gently pushed forward by the mother, with the words, “And Ruth came too, Eddy!”
“Thank you, Ruth; I knew that you wouldn’t let ma come alone,” said Ned, feebly.
The young woman had opened her lips. Now they closed. She looked at him compassionately. “Surely not, Ned,” she said.
But why, wondered the nurse, who was observant—it was her trade to observe—why did she look at him so intently, and with such a shocked pity?
Ned did not express much—the sick, especially the very sick, cannot; but whenever he waked in the night and saw his mother bending over him he smiled happily, and she would answer his thought. “Yes, my boy; my dear, good boy,” she would say.
And the sheriff in his dim corner thought sadly that the ruined life would always be saved for her now, and her son would be her good boy forever. Yet he muttered to himself, “I suppose the Lord is helping me out, and I ought to feel obliged, but I’m hanged if I wouldn’t rather take the chances and have the boy get well!”
But he knew all the time that there was no hope for Ned’s life. He lived three days after his mother came. The day before his death he was alone for a short time with the sheriff, and asked him to be good to his mother. “Ruth will be good to her too,” he said; “but last night I dreamed Mame was chasing mother, and it scared me. You won’t let her get at mother, will you?”
“Of course I won’t,” said the sheriff; “we’re watching your mother every minnit; and if that woman comes here, Raker has orders to clap her in jail. And I will always look out for your ma, Ned, and she never shall know.”
“That’s good,” said Ned, in his feeble voice. “I’ll tell you something: I always wanted to be good, but I was always bad; but I believe I would have been decent if I’d lived, because I’d have kept close to you. You’ll be good to ma—and to Ruth?”