Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/67

 doubt, but a few of the former, such as had professed to love him least, lend a helping hand. Nevertheless, the Gourd is withered, and the man, faint and sick unto death, only wishes his hour was come and he might lie down to be at rest.

"Or it has been a child—God forbid it should have been an only one! Some golden-headed darling that used to patter downstairs with you every morning to breakfast, and stand at your elbow every night after dinner. Whose dancing eyes never met your own but with the merry, saucy, confiding glances that seldom outlast a fifth birthday, and to whom you could no more have said an unkind word than you could cut off your right hand. Yesterday it was chasing butterflies across the lawn, and you carried it yourself with laughing triumph, rosy, happy, and hungry, in to tea. But the worm had begun, its work, even then. This morning you