Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/97

 so much afraid of it that she never has dared to let a breath of it come to me after I wuz in bed."

"Why," sez I reasonably, "what air could you breathe in the night, only night air; and do you spoze," sez I, "that the Lord would fix things so as to have us breathe deadly pizen half of our time? Why, you don't have to go into algebra to figger it out; in the night time you've got to breathe the night air; you can't git any other, and it stands to reason that you'd better breathe it fresh from the hand that made it—good oxygen, etc., than to take it pizened with all sorts of pizen risin' from the prespirin' skin, weak lungs and stomach, coal gas, etc."

Well, agin her good disposition come in and fetched her through this crisis. She settled down agin into the bed with a kind of a patient sithe, though I could see that she wuz as afraid of that air as if it wuz wild beasts ready to devour her, yet lookin' some relieved at the apple-blows and mornin' glories that twined round all over that screen as if they wuz some protection to her.

I bent down and kissed her agin and she kissed me back, and I went to bed. But I'll bet I got up most a dozen times and went to her door and listened, and once in a while I could hear her give a kind of a low mourn or sithe. But I didn't dast to let her know that I wuz there for fear of wakin' her clear up, and I spozed goin' to bed at such a different hour and so many new idees bein' promulgated to her would naterally upset her, but I kinder worried about her all night.

Well, in the mornin' she wuz bed-sick—too sick to git up—and I can't say but what I did have a few reflections, mebby two or three, thinkin' of the night air