and that I must keep to the house.
When he was gone Mother had Vigers heat a plate for me
to press to my stomach, for I told her it ached. Then she brought the laudanum.
It tastes pleasanter, at least, than my last medicine.
''Of course,'' she said, ''I would not have had you sit with us last night, if I had
known how ill you were.'' She said they must be more careful, in the future, as to
how they let me pass my days. Then she brought Helen, and Stephen, and I
heard them whispering. Once I think I slept, and then woke weeping and crying
out, and couldn''t shake the confusion from me for half an hour. After that I
began to be afraid of what I should say if a fever came on me while they stood
and watched. At last I said that they must only leave me, and I would be well
again. They answered: ''Leave you? What nonsense! Leave you, to be ill
alone?''—I think Mother meant to sit with me all night. In the end I made myself
lie still and calm, and they agreed I should do well enough with one of the girls to
watch me. Now Vigers is to keep beyond the door till dawn. I heard Mother tell
her to be sure I do not stir and tire myself—but, if she has caught the turning of
these pages, she hasn''t come. Once, to-day, she came quietly to the room, bringing
a cup of milk that she had boiled, then made sweet and thick with molasses and an