"For mercy's sake, don't come here now, Sandy Allen! You might have done some good by coming before; but now, poor, sweet lamb, she's very sick, and Miss Bray's most distracted. You're the very last person she'd care to see. You'd better go out just the very same quiet way you come in."
"Annie sick? How? where? when?" I asked, breathlessly.
Miss Dinsmore seized me by the shoulder, and pushing me, not too gently, into the kitchen, closed the door, and stood beside me.
"She's got brain-fever. I guess she caught cold the other day, when she went up to Hillside. She a'n't been out since, and she's been wanderin',—somethin' about not wantin' to go into a meader."
"I shall go up and see her," I answered, turning again to the door.
"Indeed you won't, Sandy Allen! You'll set her wilder than ever again."
"I shall go up and see her," I repeated, firmly; and, pushing by Miss Dinsmore, I went up the front stairs to Annie's little room.
There she lay,—her bright, golden hair on the pillow, her eyes closed,—a pale, panting phantom of herself, apparently in a troubled sleep,—her mother, the bustling, gaudily attired woman, as quiet as a little child beside her. She turned her head when she heard me, changed color, and the tears filled her eyes; but it was probably owing to the self-control of this woman, whom I had so looked down upon, that I did not snap the thread of Annie Bray's life that day. With her child on the brink of a precipice, she would make no moan to startle her off. The doctor said her sleep must be unbroken. He, too, sat there; and, obeying Mrs. Bray's quiet motion, I seated myself behind the others. The hours wore on; the October sun went down. None of us moved, but gazed in mute apprehension at the figure of her who, it seemed, could awake only in heaven. This earthly love, so strong, so fierce, in the effort to retain her,—would it prevail? This was the question which chained us there; and when, at eight o'clock, she awoke, I waited until the doctor pronounced his favorable opinion, then, without Annie's having seen me, stole out by the other door and away.
At Hillside, when I entered, pale with suppressed excitement, and told where I had been, Mrs. Lang rose at once.
"I wondered why she missed her lessons, until her brother brought word she was not well. I will send some flowers and white grapes to her at once"; and she would have rung the bell, but Miss Darry prevented her.