vainly for the smile Roger had always given to her baby plays before.

So by degrees she went back to her own pleasures, full of tender thought
for every living thing, and a loving consciousness of their wants and
ways. Her lisping voice chattered brook-like to birds and bees; her
lip curled grievously over the broken wing of a painted moth, or the
struggles of a drowning fly; in Nature's company she played as with an
infant ever divine; and no darkness assailed the never-weary child.

But Roger grew daily closer to his Shadow, and gave himself up to its
dominion, till his mother saw the bondage, and tried, mourning, every
art and device to win him away from the evil spirit, but tried in vain.
So they lived till Sunny was four years old, when suddenly, one bright
day in June, she left the roses in her garden with broken stems, but
ungathered, and, tottering into the house, fell across the threshold,
flushed and sleepy,--as they who lifted her saw at once, in the first
stage of a fever.

This unexpected blow once more severed Roger from his Shadow. He watched
his little sister with a heart full of anxious regret, yet so fully
wrapt in her wants and danger, that the gloomy Shadow, which looked afar
off at his self-accusations, dared not once intrude.

At length that day of crisis came, the pause of fever and delirium,
desired, yet dreaded, by every trembling, fearful heart that hung over
the child's pillow. If she slept, the physician said, her fate hung on
the waking; life or death would seal her when sleep resigned its claim.
It was early morning when this sentence was given; in an hour's time the
fever had subsided, the flush passed from Sunny's cheek, and she slept,
watched breathlessly by Roger and his mother. The curtains of the room