Poor Cecile! she pushed away the soft baby face of her little
brother. She cried, and wrung her hands, and turned from side to
side. Maurice was frightened, and turned tearfully to Joe. What had
come to Cecile? How hot she looked! How red were her cheeks! How
strange her words and manner!
Joe replied to the frightened little boy that Cecile was very ill,
and that it was his fault; in truth, Joe was right. The blow dealt
suddenly, and without any previous warning, was too much for Cecile.
Coming upon a frame already weakened by fatigue and anxiety she
succumbed at once, and long before Toby had brought Maurice home,
poor little Cecile was in a burning fever.
All day long had Joe watched by her side, listening to her piteous
wailings, to her bitter and reproachful cries. I think in that long
and dreadful day poor Joe reaped the wages of his weakness and sin of
the night before. Alone, with neither Toby nor Maurice, he dared not
leave the sick child. He did not know what to do for her; be could
only kneel by her side in a kind of dull pain and despair. Again and
again he asked for her forgiveness. He could not guess that his
passionate words were falling on quite unconscious ears.
In his long misery Joe had really forgotten little Maurice, but when
he saw him enter the hut with Toby he felt a kind of relief. Ignorant
truly of illness, an instinct told him that Cecile was very ill. Sick
people saw doctors, and doctors had made them well.
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