So the coarse, hard-working woman, who two weeks before had never
seen her face, now wept as true and bitter tears as she had done
beside the death-bed of the child she had lost when Teddy was a
baby; and the young doctor, who had watched the passage of a hundred
souls from time to eternity, hung over this little dying form as if
all life for him were held within it, and to lose it were to lose
all. And Teddy-ah! poor Teddy; for upon his young heart lay not only
the bitterness of the death busy with his "little sister's" life,
but the heavy burden of wrong and deception, and the proof, as he
thought, of God's displeasure in taking from him at last what he had
tried so hard to keep.
He sank upon his knees beside the bed, and hid his face,
whispering,--
"O God! let her live, and I will give her back to them as I kept her
from."
Over and over and over again, he whispered just these words,
clinching tight his boy-hands to keep down the agony of the
sacrifice; while in the very centre of his heart throbbed a hard,
dull pain, that seemed as if it would rend it asunder.
His face was still hidden, when, like an answer to his petition,
came the softest of whispers from the doctor's lips,--
"She will live, with God's help, and the best of care from you.
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