Edith took a chair by a window and looked out into the street, and Mr. Williams turned over the book on his knee. It was a volume of sermons which he was in the habit of pretending to read every Sunday afternoon. Intellectually, Mr. Williams was sceptical; and had one propounded to him, one by one, the doctrines he heard preached every Sunday, and asked him if he believed them, he would probably have answered, “Well, no, I don’t know as I do exactly”; but early education by a mother whose religion was earnest if mistaken, and that necessity for some supernatural element in the life which is the mark of our divine origin, impelled him to an observance of what he did not believe, for the want of something better which he could believe.
When Dick waked again, the first object he saw was his mother’s face, full of tearful joy. She smiled, quivered, tried to speak, and could not.
“Poor mother! what a trouble I am to you!” he said, and would have held his hand out to her, but found himself unable to raise it. He looked, and saw it thin and transparent, glanced with an expression of astonished inquiry into his mother’s face, and understood it all. “I must have been sick a long time, mother,” he said.
She kissed him tenderly. “Yes, my dear boy. But it is all over now, thank God!”
“Poor mother!” he said again. “I must have worn you out. Have you taken all the care of me?”
“No! Edith was here,” she answered timidly. “She is a good nurse, Dick.”
“Edith?” he echoed with surprise; and, after a moment’s thought, added quietly, “Yes, I recollect seeing her. She helped me a great deal, I think, dear child!”
“Would you like to see her?” his mother asked. “She has only just left the room.”
“Not now, mother,” he answered. “She will come presently. I cannot talk much now.”
He closed his eyes again, and lay in that delicious trance of convalescence, when simply to breathe is enough for contentment--the lips slightly parted, the form absolutely at rest, the eyes not so closed but a faint twilight enters through the lashes--a sweet, happy mood. When his mother moved softly about, Dick lifted his lids now and then, but was not disturbed. Sometimes, before closing them again, his half-seeing eyes dwelt a moment on some object in the room. After one of these dreamy glances, there entered through his lashes the vision of a face that seemed to cry aloud to him a piercing summons.