The next morning old Tom had his boat ready. “I do wish, missus, that you’d stayed at home a few days longer,” he remarked, looking at her. “Howsomedever, as you’ve come, I hopes you’ll just take what I say kindly, and not be from home longer than you can help. There’s dirty weather coming up from the south-west.”
Tom was right. We had two ships to visit. Before we got alongside the second down came the rain. But mother would go on, and consequently got wet through. Tom was very unhappy, but she said that she had done a good trade, and that no harm would come of it. Unhappily she was mistaken; that night she was taken very ill—worse than before. I fetched the doctor; he shook his head and said he wouldn’t answer for what might happen. Faithful Nancy was half distracted. Poor mother got worse and worse. At last one day she beckoned with her pale hand to Mary and me to come to her bedside.
“I know that I am going to be taken from you, my dears,” she said, in a low voice, for she could not speak loud. “I want you to promise me to be true to each other, to do your duty in God’s sight, and always to ask Him to help you.”
“I do, mother—I do promise,” said Mary, the tears dropping from her eyes.
She could scarcely speak for sobbing.
“I promise, too, mother, that I do!” I exclaimed, in a firmer voice; and I sincerely intended to fulfil my promise.
Mother was holding our hands in hers. She said much more to us, anxious to give us all the advice in her power. Nancy came in with her medicine, after which she rallied, and bade us go to bed.
I was awakened early in the morning by hearing Nancy cry out, “Run for the doctor, Peter! Run for the doctor! Missus is taken worse.”
I slipped into my clothes, and was off like a shot, without asking a question, or even looking into mother’s room.
I rang the night-bell, for no one was up. At last the servant opened the door, and said she would call her master.