Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French II).djvu/147

142 his hands shaking so much, it scared me, so I said:

"'Doctor, please let me hold his head!'

"'But, my poor woman, if you should tremble?'

"'Please let me do it, Doctor!'

"'Be it so then,' and then added, with a bright look at me, and a cheering smile, 'we shall save him for you, my dear; you are a brave little woman, and you deserve it.'

"Yes, and save him, did he! God bless him! saved him as truly as if he had snatched him from the depths of the river."

"And you did n't tremble, Louise?"

"You may depend on that. If I had, it would have been the last of my child."

"How in the world did you keep yourself steady?"

"The Lord knows; but I was like a rock. When you must, you must, I suppose."

"And you had to behold every detail of that operation?"

"Yes, indeed; and often have I dreamed it over since. His poor little neck laid open, and the veins, which the doctor pushed aside with his fingers and the little silver tube which he inserted, and all that; and then the face of the child, changing as the air passed into his lungs. You’ve seen a lamp almost out, when you pour in oil? It was like that. They had laid him there but half alive, with his eyes all but set; and they