Jones figured with the face of Mrs. Cadman and her hollow voice. I had
a sensation that that night the house never went to rest. People came
in and out with a pretentious purpose of not awaking me. My father
never came to bed. I felt convinced that I heard the doctor's voice in
the passage. At last, while it was yet dark, and when I seemed to have
been sleeping and waking, waking and falling asleep again in my crib
for weeks, my father came in with a strange look upon his face, and
took me up in his arms, and wrapped a blanket round me, saying mamma
wanted to kiss me, but I must be very good and make no noise. There
was little fear of that! I gazed in utter silence at the sweet face
that was whiter than the sheet below it, the hair that shone brighter
than ever in the candlelight. Only when I kissed her, and she had laid
her wan hand on my head, I whispered to my father, "Why is mamma so
cold?"
With a smothered groan he carried me back to bed, and I cried myself
to sleep. It was too true, then. She was too good and too pretty for
this world, and before sunrise she was gone.
Before the day was ended Sister Alice left us also. She never knew a
harder resting-place than our mother's arms.
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