Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/276

 weary, aching head from its heated pillow—and that her grandmother found her with burning cheeks, rapid pulse, throbbing temples, and all the terrible premonitory symptoms of fever?

But Elsie Campbell, who was an experienced and tender nurse, though fully aware of the danger which threatened her darling, met it with calm demeanor and active remedies. With her loving heart wrung to its very core, she wasted no time in idle questions or useless protestations; her loving, active hands shut out the light from the sad, staring eyes—tenderly bound the moistened linen round the tortured brow—bathed the burning cheeks, and held the cooling drink to the parched and thirsting lips. She fanned the languid sufferer, lifted the feeble form to an easier position, or held the aching head upon her kind, maternal bosom.

It seemed as if all memory of their recent feud had passed from the mind of each—all was forgiven and forgotten. Alice, moaning and tossing, with the unconscious selfishness which sickness so often awakens in the inexperienced in suffering, calling freely for all