I am sure you will be glad to know that his prayer was answered. Davie awoke from his long sleep with a look of quiet astonishment in his eyes, to think that he was lying in bed, and mother and Jennie were sitting beside him, and that George was standing over by the window. He did not remember any of the days that had passed between. He did not remember at first the fall from the scaffolding. He was by no means out of danger, the doctor said, yet there was a thread, just a thread of hope that he might rally. And so the days which followed were quite as full of anxiety and care as those in which he had been unconscious.
But Davie steadily gained, and there came a bright morning in midsummer when George was permitted to take care of him alone, while his mother attended to some household duties, and Jennie swept the dining-room and set the table. It was George’s opportunity. He had longed for it, but he did not know how to use it. How should he begin? While he considered, Davie began for him.
“It did leave a scar, didn’t it?” he said mournfully. “O, George! I remember all about it; it came to me just a few days ago. Wasn’t it awful? George, the hardest part has been to think that maybe I should die and leave that scar for you to remember me by.”
“Don’t,” said George, who had not the least idea that he should cry any more about this thing, yet who felt the tears starting in his eyes. “O, don’t, Davie! forget those horrid hateful things I said to you. You can’t think how many nice things I had to remember of you—hundreds and hundreds of them.”
“No,” said Davie mournfully; “I have always been throwing sticks and stones and hurting things. Don’t you remember how I lamed the cat, and killed a bird once, and then made that scar on your face? That is the worst of all. O, George! if I had died what a way to be remembered. Think of the lots of things that people could have told of me like that.”
George winced visibly, for these were some of the things he had told the boys in the paper factory that day.
“I tell you what it is,” he said, swallowing hard to try and speak without a tremble in his voice, “you and I have both had a lesson, Davie. If you had died I could never have forgiven myself for having teased you for getting angry, and then having said that I would remember you by this little scar, which doesn’t amount to anything, anyhow. It wasn’t true, Davie; I wouldn’t have remembered you that way.”
“I don’t see how you could have helped it,” said Davie mournfully; “but I am truly and surely going to be different after this. If you see me getting angry and acting as if I was going to throw things, I wish you would tie up my hands, or hold them, or something.”
“We will both be different,” said George. “It won’t do to plan such things as we had to remember. We will begin now and plan to have nice pleasant things, so that when—that when”—But his voice trembled and broke; he had been too near parting with Davie forever to put in words the thought that some time the parting would surely come.
But I fancy that they must have kept their words and begun over again, for this happened several years ago. George and Davie are young men now, and yesterday I heard them called “model brothers.” They really seem to be planning to have only pleasant things to remember of each other when the time comes for one of them to go away.