For a long while she lies awake, listening to her sister's uneasy whisperings. "Oh," she thinks, "why was I so unkind to her—suppose she should be really ill?"
Lucy is really ill. After a troubled night of feverish dreaming, she awakes to a consciousness of great pain and stiffness in all her limbs. A doctor is sent for; her parents' worst fears are realised, Lucy is stricken down with rheumatic fever.
She is very quiet and patient, and tries hard not to complain. Her mother nurses her, relieved by Betty now and then.
Love has taught Mrs. Langdale to be a good nurse; love makes her forget her own small illnesses and worries, and think only of her poor little daughter's suffering.
The remembrance of her unkind words gives Betty bitter pain. Lucy was ill when she scolded her. Oh, if she had known!
After a while, as Lucy grows better, Betty begins to excuse herself again. "She did read too much; I was right in that, and reading is waste of time—only I wish I hadn't been so cross with her."
Slowly the pain grows less, slowly the fever cools; but, alas! for poor Lucy, the doctor says he fears that this illness will leave lasting bad effects behind it; that, though she will soon be fairly well, she will never be quite as strong again as she has been.
One afternoon, Betty is sitting with her sister, while Mrs. Langdale rests. Lucy has just finished her basin of bread and milk, and Betty thinks she is asleep, until she hears her sigh softly to herself, and then make a restless movement on her pillow.
Betty is at her side in an instant.
"Do you want anything, Lucy?"