He drew aside the curtain of her little bed and looked in. Surely this was not the Maud he had left the night before, so pale and worn upon her pillows? A face looked up at him bright as the new day. A soft, healthy color was in the cheeks, and the moist lips were crimson.
“I knew I should be well if _she_ tended me,” a voice cried, gayer and gladder than he had heard from her lips in two years.
What _did_ the child mean? Had she gone mad? He controlled himself, and asked,--
“Who tended you, my child? I found Bessie sound asleep.”
“Yes; mamma made her sleep, and you, and nurse. She sent all of you the dreams you like best; and all night long she sat here beside my bed, with her hand on my head, just as she used to put it long ago. She was all in white, and her hair fell about her shoulders, and her eyes were very, very bright, and her lips, when she kissed me, seemed somehow to melt away.”
“So you, too, dreamed about mamma, darling?”
“No, indeed, papa, I did not dream. Mamma sat there all night long, with her hand upon my head. Sometimes I slept, but more often I woke up to look at her; and all the time she sat there, and did not tire, until the first sunshine came in at the windows; and then she kissed me and went away. I did not see her go. Perhaps I shut my eyes a moment. Then I looked and she was gone, and then I heard you coming in. She said she was with me every day, but she couldn’t have come to me like _this_, except because I needed her so very, very much. And she wanted to make me well, because you would grieve for me if I came to her; and I was to be very good, and tend you and make you comfortable; and I must laugh and must make you laugh, for laughter was good, and the reason I got ill was because I had been sorry so long, and had not laughed at all. And I was _not_ to be sorry after _her_ any more, because she was very happy, and nothing grieved her except when she saw you and me mourning for her, and not knowing that she was waiting close beside us.”
“_Was_ it her mother? Can it _be_ it was the child’s mother?” the father cried, uttering his thought aloud unconsciously.
“Of course it was mamma; and she has made me well. See if Dr. Dale does not tell you I am well.”