As she gazed, a sharp expression of pain contracted
his features and he awoke. Feebly stretching out his arms to embrace
her, he said:
"Oh, mamma, Willie is so sick, and his breast hurts so bad."
The child had caught the pleurisy.
It was late at night before medical assistance could be procured from
a distant village. In the meantime the child's illness had fearfully
progressed; and when at last the physician arrived, and examined him,
he could give no hopes of his recovery. Language cannot depict the
anguish of the mother as she bent over the couch of her suffering boy,
and, if a grain could have increased the burden of her grief, it would
have been felt in the memory of the few words of harsh rebuke when he
had returned half-frozen and heavy-hearted from his fruitless search
after the thimble, for the kind Elizabeth had arrived and explained
the incident of the night.
* * * * *
It was midnight of the ninth day. Willie had lain in a stupor for a
whole day and night previous. His mother stood by his bed; she neither
spoke nor wept, but her face wore the expression of acute suffering.
Her eyes were strained with an earnest, anxious, agonized gaze upon
the deathly countenance of the boy.
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