Homestead on the Hillside by Mary Jane Holmes
page 88 of 253 (34%)
page 88 of 253 (34%)
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golden curls with a still more golden hue. Sadly over him Lenora bent,
saying, "Willie, Willie, wake up, Willie. Don't you know me?" Greatly Mrs. Hamilton marveled whence came the cup of water which stood there, as if reproaching her for her cruelty. But the delirious words of the dreamer soon told her all. "Maggie, Maggie," he said, "rub my feet; they feel like Carrie's face. The curbstone was cold, but the water was so good. Give me more, more; mother won't care, for I got it myself, and tried not to breathe, so she could sleep--and Carrie, too, is dead--dead." Lenora fiercely grasped her mother's arm, and said, "How could you refuse him water, and sleep while he got it himself?" But Mrs. Hamilton needed not that her daughter should accuse her. Willie had been her favorite, and the tears which she dropped upon his pillow were genuine. The physician who was called pronounced his disease to be scarlet fever, saying that its violence was greatly increased by a severe cold which he had taken. "You have killed him, mother; you have killed him!" said Lenora. Twenty-four hours had passed since, with straining ear, Carrie had listened for the morning train, and again down the valley floated the smoke of the engine, and over the blue hills echoed the loud scream of the locomotive; but no sound could awaken the fair young sleeper, though Willie started, and throwing up his hands, one of which, the right one, was firmly clinched, murmured, "Maggie, Maggie." Ten minutes more and Margaret was there, weeping in agony over the |
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