Illness was the one thing lacking to my ineffable Pilgrim’s Progress, so infallibly illness has appeared.
Jimmie came down with measles on Saturday and yesterday Alicia followed his example. The crumpling of Alicia under illness has proved like the shattering of a column in the edifice of my household. The whole insecure structure is tottering. And though she is burning with fever, the unhappy girl is murmuring with anxiety that stockings go unmended and buttons unsewn.
"Don’t you worry about that, little girl," I keep telling her. "Griselda will do those things."
"Griselda has too much to do as it is," she gulps and the tears start to her hot eyes. I have isolated her and Jimmie in my room, and Randolph and Laura are cautioned to keep as far as possible away from them. I remember the time when I would have flown from the fear of infection as from the plague, but now my anxieties are of a wholly different nature. Jimmie is mending now, but Alicia is far more ill than she knows.
Griselda has undertaken the stockings and at night, when I sit watching and waiting for sounds from either of my invalids, I operate upon the buttons. It is curious how much art enters into the sewing of a button. A dog of a bachelor though I have ever been, I have never been compelled to learn that handicraft before. But I have learned from Griselda, who smiled crookedly when she imparted the law, that if you twist the thread around several times after you have sewn it, the whole thing acquires, relatively, the strength of a cable. To your punctured fingers you attend afterwards.
Alicia, awakening at midnight, sat up in bed and caught me at my task; she moaned most dolefully. I hastily put Jimmie’s little "undies" behind me, but too late.
"You’ll never want me—or need me again—what’s the use of getting well?" she wailed weakly.
"Oh, yes, I shall, Alicia—more than ever," I hastened to assure her.
"You do everything now that I ought to do," she pressed with febrile insistence. "I shall be no use any more."
"But don’t you see, Alicia," I argued, touching her hot forehead, "that I shall have to be earning money while you are doing the buttons? I ought to be earning it now, so get well as quickly as you can. Jimmie sees it; he’s much better already." That logic seemed to soothe her more than I had expected. She caught my hand impulsively and pressed it to her cheek. The tremendous part played by affection in the lives of children is a never-ceasing wonder to me.