Annie, our dear, precious, little Annie, is dead! It seems impossible
to actually realise that the pretty, little creature that used to
frolic about, so full of life and joy, is now all at once cold and
lifeless; that those young lips which prattled away so sweetly are now
for ever dumb; that those laughing eyes that used to shine so brightly
are now closed in the stillness of death.
And to-day, too, is her birthday. My wife had gone in the morning
to the Children’s Home in the hope of, at least, being able to see
the child for a few minutes. With a smile on her face, and her heart
brimful of joy, she inquired for Annie. A pause ensued, and then she
was asked again for her name and address. Presently the news was broken
to her that the child had died during the night, of quinsy, and that a
message to this effect was now on its way to the parents.
My wife sank down on a chair perfectly stupefied. But the mother’s
love for her child soon brought her strength back again. She refused
to credit such a thing, to believe that her Annie, her child, could be
dead; there must be a strange mistake somewhere. She hastily followed
the attendant to the death-room. Ah! there had been no mistake. There
lay Annie, our dear little Annie, in that still long sleep from which
no calling, and no kissing, and no bitter agony of the poor mother will
ever awaken her.
What avails it to enter into a long account of the suddenness with
which this malignant disease had attacked her? It began with a cold
which she had probably caught at night. At home the child always had a
way of kicking off the bed-clothes in her sleep. But yonder there is
no mother’s eye to watch tenderly at the bedside of each little one
amongst so many hundreds. Then again, the prescribed ventilation always
causes more or less draught in the bedrooms. Or possibly the child had
not been properly dried after a bath. In all these great establishments
a good part of the work must unavoidably be done in a summary manner.
It is likely enough, too, that the different style of living had made
the child a little weaker, and therefore more susceptible than she had
been at home. But what avails now inquiry or speculation? All that will
never bring our Annie back to life again.
How will my poor wife be able to stand all this sorrow upon sorrow? The
shock had such a serious effect upon her that she had to be taken in a
cab straight from the Children’s Home to the hospital. Later on they
fetched me. Annie had been the pet of the family, the only girl, born
some time after the lads. How many had been our hopes, our dreams, for
her welfare, when she should be once grown up?
I must break the news to-morrow to Ernst as best I can. It will not do
for grandfather to get to hear it at all. He can never more tell her
stories as she sits on his lap, as she so often used to, and ask again
and again to be told about “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf.”
Franz and Agnes in America have as yet no suspicion of our sorrow,
and they won’t get my letter before nine or ten days. Franz loved his
little sister tenderly, and it was rarely that he omitted to bring her
some trifle when coming home from work. The little rogue knew this well
enough, and used to run to meet him on the stairs as soon as there was
any sign of his coming.
And now there is an end to all these things; an end to these and to so
many other things in a few short months.