"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!"