“None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!”
By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the
customary prayer at the mother’s knee. In the midst of “Now I lay me
down to sleep,” she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one
stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with
the activities which terror inspires.
She commanded that the child’s crib be removed from the nursery to our
bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with
her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put
up in my wife’s dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams
said we were too far away from the other baby, and( what if he were to
have the symptoms in the night–and she blanched again, poor thing.
We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed
for ourselves in a room adjoining.
Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it
from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the
tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough
to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh
pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry.
We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and
Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse’s experience would be an inestimable help.
So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a
great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest
again.
Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on
there. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said:
“What can make Baby sleep so?”
I said:
“Why, my darling, Baby always sleeps like a graven image.”
“I know. I know; but there’s something peculiar about his sleep now.
He seems to–to–he seems to breathe so regularly. Oh, this is
dreadful.”
“But, my dear, he always breathes regularly.”
“Oh, I know it, but there’s something frightful about it now. His nurse
is too young and inexperienced. Maria shall stay there with her, and be
on hand if anything happens.”
“That is a good idea, but who will help you?”
“You can help me all I want. I wouldn’t allow anybody to do anything but
myself, anyhow, at such a time as this.”
I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch
and toil over our little patient all the weary night. But she reconciled
me to it. So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the
nursery.
Penelope coughed twice in her sleep.
“Oh, why don’t that doctor come! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This
room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register-quick!”
I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and
wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child.
The coachman arrived from down-town now with the news that our physician
was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon
me, and said in a dead voice:
“There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. He never was sick
before. Never. We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer.
Time and time again I have told you so. Now you see the result. Our
child will never get well. Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I
never can forgive myself.”
I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of words, that I
could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life.
“Mortimer! Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!”
Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed:
“The doctor must have sent medicines!”
I said:
“Certainly. They are here. I was only waiting for you to give me a
chance.”
“Well do give them to me! Don’t you know that every moment is precious
now? But what was the use in sending medicines, when he knows that the