“You have lost other children?” said Rose, gently, looking up as she cleared the basket.
“Yes; two, and he’s the last. They hadn’t no great time while they was alive, and now they’re lyin’ out in the wood, and no more mark over ’em than if they was dead dogs. There won’t no one care.”
“Yes, I shall care; I do care, Mrs. Colkett. Oh, isn’t it hard to say why such things do happen?”
“Happen!” said the woman. “Dorothy, she says God took them children. I’d like to know why? Preachin’ ’s easy business. God! What do I know about God, except that he’s done nothin’ for me? And I’m to be thankful,—what for?” As she spoke a hoarse sound came from the bed. “For that poor little man a-croakin’ there, I suppose!”
As Rose was about to reply, her father touched her arm, and, understanding that argument was thus hinted to be unwise, she said:
“Let me see the little fellow?”
“You may, if you’ve a mind. ’Tain’t no good. When it isn’t any good, it isn’t any good, and that’s all there is to it.”
Rose went up to the bed. A sickening odor filled the close air. She saw beneath her a stout little boy of ten, hot and dusky red with fever, his lips purple, two small hands tightly locked, with the thumbs in the palms, the head, soaked with the death-sweat, rolling rhythmically from side to side. The woman followed her.
“Has he had any one to see him?” said Lyndsay.
“Yes. We had a doctor from down river. He came twice. He wasn’t no use. He took ’most all the money we had left.”