Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/111

 Walton may be out. Run, boys! Fetch some one—any one! Run!"

The boys were on their feet in an instant. In another moment she was at the child's bedstead, trying one ineffectual remedy after another. Her slender science was soon exhausted, all to no purpose. The struggle went on in a succession of alarming paroxysms. Then she sat upon the bed and held the suffocating child in her arms, trembling in a despairing knowledge that she could not help him, yet with the deep overwhelming urgency of a mother's love, which cannot credit its ownimpotency. She held him close, one of his little hands convulsively clasping hers, the small curly head pressed hard against her breast. Oh! the pathos of those baby curls, and that drawn, agonized baby face!

"In a minute, my precious," she kept saying, "in a minute the doctor'll come and make you well—just a minute, my poor darling. It'll be over soon."

Over? How? As she spoke the words a desolating fear swept all her faith away, and suddenly, as in a flash of light, those other words, unheeded and forgotten, struck upon her memory: "Fix not your hearts upon the things of this world."

She looked down with a quick pang of remorse upon the stiff moiré antique. Alas! she who would have enfolded her darling in the softest textures, must see him lie in his extremity against