Louise hesitated a moment; then, struggling to keep back the tears, answered steadily, smiling on Nellie,—
"She is referring to a little conversation which she and I had this afternoon. She gave herself away to Jesus, and she is telling me that he took her.—Yes, darling; I know he did."
A sharp cry, almost as from a wounded animal, escaped the drawn lips of the mother; then she gave herself with renewed energy to the work of fighting disease.
And the clock was watched eagerly, and the drops administered at just such moments; and the bath was replenished, and the rubbing of feet and hands went on, and the compresses were changed constantly; and, just as Dorothy, with a little gasp of relief, said, "There's the doctor!" as the sound of voices was heard in the hall, Louise and her mother-in-law said, in the same breath, "She breathes easier!"
"Well," said the doctor, after the patient had been examined, and the drops from Louise's bottle looked into, and the questions had been answered, "you have really done all there was to be done, and the little woman is past the crisis for to-night; but it was a tough case, I guess. That medicine works like a charm sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't. It helps, though, where there is hot water, and speed and good judgment to supplement it."
The Morgan family were not likely to forget the experiences of that night. To each member of it they had been peculiar. No one knows, or at least can describe, the emotions which tugged at the heart of the father, as he galloped through the gloom of that night, not knowing but that the death angel, who evidently hovered near, would have gone away with his youngest born before he could get back to her. No one, perhaps, but the Searcher of hearts will ever know what the mother felt as she strained every nerve to hold back the destroyer, and yet thought she saw his grim steps approaching. Through all the swift working and swift thinking, the strongest feeling of Louise's heart had been pity for that mother. All the events of the dreary afternoon photographed themselves before her with startling distinctness. What must they be to the mother? Swiftly as she worked, and entirely as she seemed to give her mind to the needs of the hour, with every motion there went up a prayer that the Great Physician would, for the mother's sake, speak the word of healing; and presently there went up the prayer of grateful acknowledgment. Fair little Nellie, as she lay back at last, white and exhausted with her hard hours of suffering, seemed possessed with something like the same feeling of pity for the mother, but she gave it expression in a way that almost broke that mother's heart. Putting up her weak little hand as the mother bent over her, she patted tenderly the white, wrinkled cheek, and said, in the most loving and penitent of tones,—
"Dear mamma, I didn't mean to be naughty."
Then, indeed, the strain that had been upon the mother's heart, not only for that afternoon, but for days and weeks, gave way suddenly, and with the bitter cry, "O Nellie, don't!" she burst into a passion of tears.