shrieked out. Then the words ended with a long-drawn-out "Oh--oh--"

Had Maria not been familiar with the words, she could not have
understood them. Not a consonant was fairly sounded, the vowels were
elided. She went, feeling as if her legs were sticks, close to her
mother's bed, and opened the cologne bottle with hands which shook
like an old man's with the palsy. She poured some cologne on the
handkerchief and a pungent odor filled the room. She laid the wet
handkerchief on her mother's sallow forehead, then she recoiled, for
her mother, at the shock of the coldness, experienced a new and
almost insufferable spasm of pain. "Let--me alone!" she wailed, and
it was like the howl of a dog.

Maria slunk back to the dresser with the handkerchief and the cologne
bottle, then she returned to her mother's bedside and seated herself
there in a rocking-chair. A lamp was burning over on the dresser, but
it was turned low; her mother's convulsed face seemed to waver in
unaccountable shadows. Maria sat, not speaking a word, but quivering
from head to foot, and her mother kept up her prayers and her verses
from Scripture. Maria herself began to pray in her heart. She said it
over and over to herself, in unutterable appeal and terror, "O Lord,
please make mother well, please make her well." She prayed on,
although the groaning wail never ceased.

Suddenly her mother turned and looked at her, and spoke quite
naturally. "Is that you?" she said.

"Yes, mother. I'm so sorry you are sick. Father has gone for the
doctor."