BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XXXI  

Nurse and Patient

I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went  upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder  and see how she was getting on with her copy-book.  Writing was a  trying business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power  over a pen, but in whose hand every pen appeared to become  perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and  splash, and sidle into corners like a saddle-donkey.  It was very  odd to see what old letters Charley's young hand had made, they so  wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and round.   Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things and had as nimble  little fingers as I ever watched. 

"Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in  which it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and  collapsed in all kinds of ways, "we are improving.  If we only get  to make it round, we shall be perfect, Charley."  T

hen I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join  Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot. 

"Never mind, Charley.  We shall do it in time." 

Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut  her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride  and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy. 

"Thank you, miss.  If you please, miss, did you know a poor person  of the name of Jenny?" 

"A brickmaker's wife, Charley?  Yes." 

"She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and  said you knew her, miss.  She asked me if I wasn't the young lady's  little maid--meaning you for the young lady, miss--and I said yes,  miss." 

"I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley." 

"So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to  live--she and Liz.  Did you know another poor person of the name of  Liz, miss?" 

"I think I do, Charley, though not by name." 

"That's what she said!" returned Chariey. 

"They have both come  back, miss, and have been tramping high and low." 

"Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?" 

"Yes, miss."  If Charley could only have made the letters in her  copy as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they  would have been excellent. 

"And this poor person came about the  house three or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss--all  she wanted, she said--but you were away.  That was when she saw me.   She saw me a-going about, miss," said Charley with a short laugh of  the greatest delight and pride, "and she thought I looked like your  maid!" 

"Did she though, really, Charley?" 

"Yes, miss!" said Charley. 

"Really and truly."  And Charley, with  another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round  again and looked as serious as became my maid.  I was never tired  of seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity,  standing before me with her youthful face and figure, and her  steady manner, and her childish exultation breaking through it now  and then in the pleasantest way.  "And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.  My little maid's countenance fell as she replied, "By the doctor's  shop, miss."  For Charley wore her black frock yet.  I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said no.  It  was some one else.  Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to  Saint Albans and was tramping he didn't know where.  A poor boy,  Charley said.  No father, no mother, no any one.  "Like as Tom  might have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father," said  Charley, her round eyes filling with tears.  "And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"  "She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done as  much for her."  My little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded  so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no  great difficulty in reading her thoughts.  "Well, Charley," said I,  "it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to  Jenny's and see what's the matter."  The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and  having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and  made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed  her readiness.  So Charley and I, without saying anything to any  one, went out.  It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind.   The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little  intermission for many days.  None was falling just then, however.   The sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy--even above us,  where a few stars were shining.  In the north and north-west, where  the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light  both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud  waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving. 

Towards  London a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste, and the  contrast between these two lights, and the fancy which the redder  light engendered of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen  buildings of the city and on all the faces of its many thousands of  wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might be.  I had no thought that night--none, I am quite sure--of what was  soon to happen to me.  But I have always remembered since that when  we had stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when  we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression  of myself as being something different from what I then was. 

I  know it was then and there that I had it.  I have ever since  connected the feeling with that spot and time and with everything  associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the  town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the  miry hill.  It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the  place where we were going were drinking elsewhere.  We found it  quieter than I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable.   The kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a  pale-blue glare.  We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the  patched window.  We tapped at the door and went in.  The mother of  the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of  the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy,  supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor.  He held  under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and  as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and  window shook.  The place was closer than before and had an  unhealthy and a very peculiar smell.  I had not lifted by veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was  at the moment of our going in.  The boy staggered up instantly and  stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.  His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident  that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.  "I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "I  ain't a-going there, so I tell you!"  I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman.  She said to me in a low  voice, "Don't mind him, ma'am.  He'll soon come back to his head,"  and said to him, "Jo, Jo, what's the matter?" 

"I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy. 

"Who?" 

"The lady there.  She's come to get me to go along with her to the  berryin ground.  I won't go to the berryin ground.  I don't like  the name on it.  She might go a-berryin ME." 

His shivering came on  again, and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel. 

"He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am,"  said Jenny softly. 

"Why, how you stare!  This is MY lady, Jo." 

"Is it?" returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm  held out above his burning eyes.  "She looks to me the t'other one.   It ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to  me the t'other one." 

My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and  trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly  up to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick  nurse.  Except that no such attendant could have shown him  Charley's youthful face, which seemed to engage his confidence. 

"I say!" said the boy. 

"YOU tell me.  Ain't the lady the t'other  lady?" 

Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him  and made him as warm as she could. 

"Oh!" the boy muttered. 

"Then I s'pose she ain't." 

"I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. 

"What is the  matter with you?" 

"I'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard  gaze wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and  then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour.  And my head's all  sleepy, and all a-going mad-like--and I'm so dry--and my bones  isn't half so much bones as pain. 

"When did he come here?" I asked the woman. 

"This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town.  I had  known him up in London yonder.  Hadn't I, Jo?" 

"Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.  Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very  little while.  He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it  heavily, and speak as if he were half awake. 

"When did he come from London?" I asked. 

"I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and  hot. 

"I'm a-going somewheres."  "Where is he going?" I asked. 

"Somewheres," repeated the boy in a louder tone. 

"I have been  moved on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the  t'other one give me the sov'ring.  Mrs. Snagsby, she's always a- watching, and a-driving of me--what have I done to her?--and  they're all a-watching and a-driving of me.  Every one of 'em's  doing of it, from the time when I don't get up, to the time when I  don't go to bed.  And I'm a-going somewheres.  That's where I'm a- going.  She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone's, as she came from  Stolbuns, and so I took the Stolbuns Road.  It's as good as  another."  He always concluded by addressing Charley. 

"What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside. 

"He  could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew  where he was going!"  

"I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing  compassionately at him. 

"Perhaps the dead know better, if they  could only tell us.  I've kept him here all day for pity's sake,  and I've given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any  one will take him in (here's my pretty in the bed--her child, but I  call it mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to  come home and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and  might do him a hurt.  Hark! Here comes Liz back!"  The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up  with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going.  When  the little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it  out of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know.   

There she was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she  were living in Mrs. Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma again.  The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from  hand to hand, and had come back as she went.  At first it was too  early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at  last it was too late.  One official sent her to another, and the  other sent her back again to the first, and so backward and  forward, until it appeared to me as if both must have been  appointed for their skill in evading their duties instead of  performing them. 

And now, after all, she said, breathing quickly,  for she had been running and was frightened too, "Jenny, your  master's on the road home, and mine's not far behind, and the Lord  help the boy, for we can do no more for him!"  They put a few  halfpence together and hurried them into his hand, and so, in an  oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he shuffled out of  the house.  "Give me the child, my dear," said its mother to Charley, "and  thank you kindly too!  Jenny, woman dear, good night!  Young lady, if my master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by  the kiln by and by, where the boy will be most like, and again in  the morning!"  She hurried off, and presenfty we passed her hushing  and singing to her child at her own door and looking anxiously  along the road for her drunken husband.  I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I  should bring her into trouble.  But I said to Charley that we must  not leave the boy to die.  Charley, who knew what to do much better  than I did, and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind,  glided on before me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short  of the brick-kiln.  I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under  his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it.  For he still  carried his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he  went bareheaded through the rain, which now fell fast.  He stopped  when we called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came  up, standing with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even  arrested in his shivering fit.  I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had  some shelter for the night. 

"I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm  bricks." 

"But don't you know that people die there?" replied Charley. 

"They dies everywheres," said the boy.  "They dies in their  lodgings--she knows where; I showed her--and they dies down in Tom- all-Alone's in heaps.  They dies more than they lives, according to  what I see."  Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, "If she ain't the  t'other one, she ain't the forrenner.  Is there THREE of 'em then?"  Charley looked at me a little frightened.  I felt half frightened  at myself when the boy glared on me so.  But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that  he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home.   It was not far, only at the summit of the hill.  We passed but one  man.  I doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the  boy's steps were so uncertain and tremulous.  He made no complaint,  however, and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say  so strange a thing.  Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the  window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be  called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into  the drawing-room to speak to my guardian.  There I found Mr.  Skimpole, who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did  without notice, and never bringing any clothes with him, but always  borrowing everything he wanted.  They came out with me directly to look at the boy.  The servants  had gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat  with Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had  been found in a ditch. 

"This is a sorrowful case," said my guardian after asking him a  question or two and touching him and examining his eyes.  "What do  you say, Harold?" 

"You had better turn him out," said Mr. Skimpole. 

"What do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly. 

"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr. Skimpole, "you know what I am: I am a  child.  Be cross to me if I deserve it.  But I have a  constitutional objection to this sort of thing.  I always had, when  I was a medical man.  He's not safe, you know.  There's a very bad  sort of fever about him." 

Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again  and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we  stood by. 

"You'll say it's childish," observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at  us. 

"Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never  pretend to be anything else.  If you put him out in the road, you  only put him where he was before.  He will be no worse off than he  was, you know.  Even make him better off, if you like.  Give him  sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten--you are  arithmeticians, and I am not--and get rid of him!" 

"And what is he to do then?" asked my guardian. 

"Upon my life," said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his  engaging smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then.   But I have no doubt he'll do it." 

"Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my guardian, to whom I  had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is  it not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his  hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner,  his hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well  taken care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?" 

"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "you'll pardon the  simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who  is perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN'T he a prisoner  then?"  My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of  amusement and indignation in his face. 

"Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should  imagine," said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid.  "It seems to me  that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more  respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into  prison.  There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and  consequently more of a certain sort of poetry." 

"I believe," returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that  there is not such another child on earth as yourself." 

"Do you really?" said Mr. Skimpole. 

"I dare say!  But I confess I  don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to  invest himself with such poetry as is open to him.  He is no doubt  born with an appetite--probably, when he is in a safer state of  health, he has an excellent appetite.  Very well.  At our young  friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young  friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will you have the  goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?'  Society, which has  taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of  spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT  produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You  really must excuse me if I seize it.'  Now, this appears to me a  case of misdirected energy, which has a certain amount of reason in  it and a certain amount of romance; and I don't know but what I  should be more interested in our young friend, as an illustration  of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond--which any one can  be." 

"In the meantime," I ventured to observe, "he is getting worse." 

"In the meantime," said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, "as Miss  Summerson, with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting  worse.  Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets  still worse."  The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never  forget. 

"Of course, little woman," observed my guardian, tuming to me, "I  can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going  there to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his  condition, that is necessary.  But it's growing late, and is a very  bad night, and the boy is worn out already.  There is a bed in the  wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there  till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed.  We'll do  that." 

"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano  as we moved away. 

"Are you going back to our young friend?" 

"Yes," said my guardian. 

"How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!" returned Mr. Skimpole  with playful admiration. 

"You don't mind these things; neither  does Miss Summerson.  You are ready at all times to go anywhere,  and do anything.  Such is will!  I have no will at all--and no  won't--simply can't." 

"You can't recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?" said my  guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half  angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an  accountable being. 

"My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his  pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take it.  You  can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he  sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm.  But  it is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation.  Miss  Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for  the administration of detail that she knows all about it." 

We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to  do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with  the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at  what was done as if it were for somebody else.  The servants  compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,  we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the  house carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up.  It was  pleasant to observe how kind they were to him and how there  appeared to be a general impression among them that frequently  calling him "Old Chap" was likely to revive his spirits.  Charley  directed the operations and went to and fro between the loft-room  and the house with such little stimulants and comforts as we  thought it safe to give him.  My guardian himself saw him before he  was left for the night and reported to me when he returned to the  growlery to write a letter on the boy's behalf, which a messenger  was charged to deliver at day-light in the morning, that he seemed  easier and inclined to sleep. 

They had fastened his door on the  outside, he said, in case of his being delirious, but had so  arranged that he could not make any noise without being heard.  Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all  this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic  airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with  great expression and feeling.  When we rejoined him in the drawing- room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come into  his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a  peasant boy,      "Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,     Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home."   quite exquisitely.  It was a song that always made him cry, he told  us.  He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely  chirped--those were his delighted words--when he thought by what a  happy talent for business he was surrounded.  He gave us, in his  glass of negus, "Better health to our young friend!" and supposed  and gaily pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington  to become Lord Mayor of London.  In that event, no doubt, he would  establish the Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses,  and a little annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans.  He had  no doubt, he said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in  his way, but his way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold  Skimpole was, Harold Skimpole had found himself, to his  considerable surprise, when he first made his own acquaintance; he  had accepted himself with all his failings and had thought it sound  philosophy to make the best of the bargain; and he hoped we would  do the same.  Charley's last report was that the boy was quiet.  I could see,  from my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and  I went to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.  There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before  daybreak, and it awoke me.  As I was dressing, I looked out of my  window and asked one of our men who had been among the active  sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the  house.  The lantern was still burning in the loft-window. 

"It's the boy, miss," said he. 

"Is he worse?" I inquired.  "Gone, miss. 

"Dead!" 

"Dead, miss?  No.  Gone clean off." 

At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed  hopeless ever to divine.  The door remaining as it had been left,  and the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed  that he had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with  an empty cart-house below.  But he had shut it down again, if that  were so; and it looked as if it had not been raised.  Nothing of  any kind was missing. 

On this fact being clearly ascertained, we  all yielded to the painful belief that delirium had come upon him  in the night and that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued  by some imaginary horror, he had strayed away in that worse than  helpless state; all of us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who  repeatedly suggested, in his usual easy light style, that it had  occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having  a bad kind of fever upon him, and that he had with great natural  politeness taken himself off.  Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched.  The  brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women  were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and  nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine.  The weather had  for some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to  admit of any tracing by footsteps.  Hedge and ditch, and wall, and  rick and stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round,  lest the boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead;  but nothing was seen to indicate that he had ever been near.  From  the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.  The search continued for five days.  I do not mean that it ceased  even then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current  very memorable to me.  As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and  as I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble.   Looking up, I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot. 

"Charley," said I, "are you so cold?" 

"I think I am, miss," she replied. 

"I don't know what it is.  I  can't hold myself still.  I felt so yesterday at about this same  time, miss.  Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill." 

I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of  communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and  locked it.  Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was  yet upon the key.  Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest.   Go away.  There's nothing the matter; I will come to you  presently." 

Ah! It was a long, long time before my darling girl  and I were companions again.  Charley fell ill.  In twelve hours she was very ill.  I moved her  to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse  her.  I told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was  necessary that I should seclude myself, and my reason for not  seeing my darling above all.  At first she came very often to the  door, and called to me, and even reproached me with sobs and tears;  but I wrote her a long letter saying that she made me anxious and  unhappy and imploring her, as she loved me and wished my mind to be  at peace, to come no nearer than the garden.  After that she came  beneath the window even oftener than she had come to the door, and  if I had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were  hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love it then, when I stood  behind the window-curtain listening and replying, but not so much  as looking out!  How did I learn to love it afterwards, when the  harder time came!  They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door  wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had  vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and  airy.  There was not a servant in or about the house but was so  good that they would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of  the day or night without the least fear or unwillingness, but I  thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada  and whom I could trust to come and go with all precaution.  Through  her means I got out to take the air with my guardian when there was  no fear of meeting Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of  attendance, any more than in any other respect.  And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy  danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day  and night.  So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by  such a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding  her head in my arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would  come to her in no other attitude--I silently prayed to our Father  in heaven that I might not forget the lesson which this little  sister taught me.  I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would  change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was such a  child with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater  part, lost in her greater peril.  When she was at the worst, and  her mind rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and  the little children, she still knew me so far as that she would be  quiet in my arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur  out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly.  At those times I  used to think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that  the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to  them in their need was dead!  There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me,  telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was  sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. 

At those times Charley  would speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she  could to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried  who was the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the  ruler's daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of  death.  And Charley told me that when her father died she had  kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might  be raised up and given back to his poor children, and that if she  should never get better and should die too, she thought it likely  that it might come into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for  her.  Then would I show Tom how these people of old days had been  brought back to life on earth, only that we might know our hope to  be restored to heaven!  But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there  was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of.   And there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last  high belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in  God, on the part of her poor despised father.  And Charley did not die.  She flutteringiy and slowly turned the  dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to  mend.  The hope that never had been given, from the first, of  Charley being in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to  be encouraged; and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into  her old childish likeness again.  It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood  out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at  last took tea together in the next room.  But on that same evening,  I felt that I was stricken cold.  Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed  again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of  her illness was upon me.  I had been able easily to hide what I  felt at tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that  I was rapidly following in Charley's steps.  I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to  return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk  with her as long as usual.  But I was not free from an impression  that I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little  beside myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at  times--with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too  large altogether.  In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare  Charley, with which view I said, "You're getting quite strong,  Charley, are you not?' 

"Oh, quite!" said Charley. 

"Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?" 

"Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley.  But Charley's  face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in  MY face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my  bosom, and said "Oh, miss, it's my doing!  It's my doing!" and a  great deal more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.  "Now, Charley," said I after letting her go on for a little while,  "if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you.   And unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were  for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley." 

"If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. 

"Oh,  my dear, my dear!  If you'll only let me cry a little longer.  Oh,  my dear!"--how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as  she clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears--"I'll be  good." 

So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good. 

"Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley quietly. 

"I  am listening to everything you say." 

"It's very little at present, Charley.  I shall tell your doctor  to-night that I don't think I am well and that you are going to  nurse me." 

For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. 

"And in  the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not  be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go,  Charley, and say I am asleep--that I have rather tired myself, and  am asleep.  At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley,  and let no one come."  Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy.  I saw the  doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask  relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet.   I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into  day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on  the first morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.  On the second morning I heard her dear voice--Oh, how dear now!-- outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being  painful to me), to go and say I was asleep.  I heard her answer  softly, "Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!" 

"How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired. 

"Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain. 

"But I know she is very beautiful this morning." 

"She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. 

"Still looking  up at the window." 

With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when  raised like that!  I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge. 

"Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her  way into the room.  Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to  the last!  Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon  me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die." 

"I never will!  I never will!" she promised me. 

"I believe it, my dear Charley.  And now come and sit beside me for  a little while, and touch me with your hand.  For I cannot see you,  Charley; I am blind."

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