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_ TEN days more, and beside the fire in Mrs. Ginniss's attic-room sat
a little figure, propped in the wooden rocking-chair with pillows
and comfortables; while upon a small stand close beside her were
arranged a few cheap toys, a plate with some pieces of orange upon
it, a sprig of geranium in a broken-nosed pitcher of water, and a
cup of beef-tea.
But for none of these did the languid little invalid seem to care;
and lying back in the chair, her head nestled into the pillow, her
parched lips open, and her eyes half closed, she looked so little
like the bright and glowing 'Toinette who had danced at her
birthday-party not a month before, that it is a question if any one
but her own mother would have believed her to be the same.
Mrs. Ginniss, hard at work upon the frills of a fashionable lady's
skirt, paused every few moments to look over her shoulder at the
little wasted face with the wistful look of some dumb creature who
sees its offspring suffering, and cannot tell how to relieve it.
Suddenly setting the flat-iron she had just taken back upon the
stove, the washwoman came and bent over the child, looking earnestly
into her face.
"An' it's waker an' whiter she gits every day. Sure and I'm afther
seeing the daylight through the little hands uv her; and her eyes is
that big, they take the breath uv me whin I mate 'em. See,
darlint!-see the purty skip-jack Teddy brought ye!"
She took from the table the toy she named, and, pulling the string,
made the figure of the man vault over the top of the stick and back
several times, crying at the same time,--
"Hi, thin!-hi, thin! See how the crather joomps, honey!"
But, although the languid eyes of the child followed her motions for
a moment, no shadow of a smile stirred the parched lips; and
presently the eyes closed, as if the effort were too much for them.
Mrs. Ginniss laid the toy upon the table, and took up the cup of
beef-tea.
"Have a soop of yer dhrink, darlint?" said she, tenderly holding the
cup to the child's lips, and raising her head with the other hand;
but, with a moan of impatience or distress, the weary head turned
itself upon the pillow, and the little wasted hand half rose to push
away the cup.
"An' what is it I'll plaze ye wid, mavourneen? Do yees want Teddy to
coom home?" asked the poor woman in despair.
A faint murmur of assent crept from between the parched lips; and
the eyes, slowly opening, glanced toward the door.
"It's this minute he'll be here, thin," said the washwoman joyfully.
"An' faith yees ought to love him, honey; for he'd give the two eyes
out of his head to plaze yees, an' git down on his knees to thank
yees for takin' 'em. Now, thin, don't ye hear his fut upon the
stair?"
But the heavy steps coming up the stairs were not Teddy's, as his
mother well knew; and although, when they stopped upon the landing
below her own, she pretended to be much surprised, she would, in
reality, have been much more so if they had not stopped.
"And it's Jovarny it wor that time, honey," said she soothingly:
"but Teddy'll coom nixt; see if he doun't, Cherry darlint."
But Cherry, closing her eyes, with no effort at reply, lay as
motionless upon her pillow as if she had been asleep or in a swoon.
Suddenly, from the room below, was heard a strain of plaintive
music. The organ-grinder, for some reason or other, was trying his
instrument in his own room; although, remembering the sick child
above, he played as softly and slowly as he could. It was the first
time he had done so since Cherry had been ill; and Mrs. Ginniss
anxiously watched her face to see what effect the sounds would have.
The air was "Kathleen Mavourneen;" and, as one tender strain
succeeded another, the watchful nurse could see a faint color
stealing into the child's face, while from between the half-closed
lids her eyes shone brighter than they had for many a day.
"If it plazes her, I'll pay him to grind away all day, the crather,"
murmured she joyfully.
The song ended, and, after a little pause, was succeeded by a lively
dancing-tune.
"She'll not like that so well, thought Mrs. Ginniss; but, to her
great astonishment, the child, after listening a moment, started
upright in her chair, her eyes wide open and shining with
excitement, her cheeks glowing, and her little hands fluttering.
"Mamma, mamma! I'm Cherritoe! and I can dance with that music, and
mamma can play it more"--
The words faltered upon her lips, and she sank suddenly back upon
the pillows in a death-faint. At the same moment, Teddy came
bounding up the stairs and into the room.
"Go an' shtop that fool's noise if yees brain him, an' ax him what's
the name o' that divil's jig he's playing!" exclaimed Mrs. Ginniss
as she caught sight of the boy; and Teddy, without stopping for a
question, hastily obeyed.
In a moment he was back.
"It's the cachuca, mother; but what's the matter with the little
sister?"
"Whist! She's swounded wid the noise he's afther making," replied
his mother angrily, as she laid the wasted little figure upon her
bed, and bathed the temples with cold water.
Teddy stood anxiously looking on. Ever since the night when the
little sister's fever had turned, and the doctor had promised that
she should live, a struggle had been going on in the boy's heart. He
could not but believe that God had given back the almost-departed
life in answer to his earnest prayer and promise; and he had no
intention of breaking the promise, or withholding the price he felt
himself to have offered for that life. But, like many older and
better taught persons, Teddy did not see clearly enough how little
difference there is between doing right and failing to do right, or
how much difference between promising with the lips and promising
with the heart.
While his little sister, as he still called her, lay between life
and death, Teddy said to himself that the excitement of seeing her
friends might be fatal to her, and that, if she should die, their
grief in this second loss would be greater than what they were now
suffering.
When she began slowly to recover, he said that they would only be
frightened at seeing her so wasted and weak, and that he would keep
her until she had recovered something of her good looks; and,
finally, he had begun to think that it would be no more than fair
that he should repay himself for all the sorrow and anxiety her
illness had given him by keeping her a little while after she was
quite well and strong, and could go for a walk with him, and see the
beautiful shops, with their Christmas-wares displayed.
"New Year's will be soon enough. I'll take her to the master for a
New-Year's gift," Teddy had said to himself that very night as he
came up the stairs; and a sort of satisfaction crept into his heart
in thinking that he had at least fixed a date for fulfilling his
promise.
But New-Year's Day found 'Toinette, or Cherry as we must learn to
call her, more unlike her former self than she had been when he
formed the resolution. The strange emotion that had overcome her in
listening to the organ-grinder's music had caused a relapse into
fever, followed by other troubles; and spite of Dr. Wentworth's
constant care, Mrs. Ginniss's patient and tender nursing, and
Teddy's devotion, the child seemed pining away without hope or
remedy.
"I'll wait till the spring comes, anyway," said Teddy to himself.
"Maybe the warm weather will bring her round, and I'll hear her
laugh out once, and take her for just one walk on the Commons before
I carry her to the master." _
Read next: CHAPTER XIV - GIOVANNI AND PANTALON
Read previous: CHAPTER XII - TEDDY'S TEMPTATION
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