Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/281

 the time lying on my face on my bed, crying. I neglected Jims—that is the hateful truth—I was cowardly and false to what I promised Walter—and if Jims had died I could never have forgiven myself.

“Then, the third night after father and mother went away, Jims suddenly got worse—oh, so much worse—all at once. Susan and I were all alone. Gertrude had been at Lowbridge when the storm began and had never got back. At first we were not much alarmed. Jims has had several bouts of croup and Susan and Morgan and I have always brought him through without much trouble. But it wasn't very long before we were dreadfully alarmed.

“‘I never saw croup like this before,’ said Susan.

“As for me, I knew, when it was too late, what kind of croup it was. I knew it was not the ordinary croup—‘false croup’ as doctors call it but the ‘true’ croup—and I knew that it was a deadly and dangerous thing. And father was away and there was no doctor nearer than Lowbridge—and we could not ’phone—and neither horse nor man could get through the drifts that night.

“Gallant little Jims put up a good fight for his life,—Susan and I tried every remedy we could think of or find in father’s books, but he continued to grow worse. It was heart-rending to see and hear him. He gasped so horribly for breath—the poor little soul—and his face turned a dreadful bluish colour and had such an agonized expression, and he kept struggling with his little hands,—as if he were appealing to us to help him somehow. I found myself thinking that the boys who had been gassed at the front must have looked like that, and the thought haunted me amid all my dread and