Little J. W. was three years old before he could speak distinctly. The child was born with other afflictions than the serious impediment to his speech, and the four who hung with anguished love on his every gesture were never free from a certain unnamed anxiety. He loved Bill, but he worshipped Jap. Both were his willing slaves.
One rainy, dismal night in early fall, when Bill's step-mother lay seriously ill, Flossy left her baby to the care of the small but usually capable maid who assisted her with the work of the cottage, while she and Ellis went to the home of Judge Bowers to relieve the trained nurse who had come up from the city. At the supper table, Ellis had remarked that Jap and Bill would be working late that night, in order to get out a job that had come in when all the resources of the office were needed for the weekly edition of the Herald. He had added that he would go over and help them, if his presence could be spared from the sick-room.
The remark must have lodged in the baby's mind, for he slipped out of bed, while the maid was employed in the kitchen, and toddled through the cold rain almost all the way to Main street. Jim Blanke found him lying exhausted in the road, a little way from the drug store, the rain beating pitilessly on his unconscious head and his scantily clad body.
After a night of anxious care, the little fellow relapsed into a state of coma, and lay for hours, white and still, save for the rasping of his breath. The office was closed. Both boys, frantic with fear, stood with Ellis as the child lay in his mother's arms, the four dreading that each hoarse breath would be his last. Flossy sat erect in the wide rocking chair, her brave eyes watching every sigh that tore the little bosom. Dr. Hall, whose dictum was life and death, was silent. And this silence was the last straw for Jap. He crept nearer. In fear, he turned from the face of the beloved sufferer. Ellis caught the look in the boy's anguished eyes, and a spasm crossed his tightly compressed lips. The physician rallied himself from the torpor of despair that had laid hold on him.
"Try to arouse him," he commanded. "Try again." The resources of his experience and his prescription blank had long since been exhausted.
Flossy bent over her child and called softly:
"Baby, dearest, mamma loves you. Won't you speak?"
Ellis leaned forward. His face blanched. The rasping had ceased! Jap caught the look of horror, and dragged himself up to look into the baby's face.
"He isn't dead! He's all right!" he shrieked, not knowing that he spoke. "He's still breathing. I can hear him." His hands grasped the cold body and lifted it, unconscious of the thing he was doing.
"Oh, J. W.! Oh, J. W.!" he screamed, "don't go away from us!"