"It's the cachuca, mother; but what's the matter with the little
sister?"

"Whist! She's swounded wid the noise he's afther making," replied
his mother angrily, as she laid the wasted little figure upon her
bed, and bathed the temples with cold water.

Teddy stood anxiously looking on. Ever since the night when the
little sister's fever had turned, and the doctor had promised that
she should live, a struggle had been going on in the boy's heart. He
could not but believe that God had given back the almost-departed
life in answer to his earnest prayer and promise; and he had no
intention of breaking the promise, or withholding the price he felt
himself to have offered for that life. But, like many older and
better taught persons, Teddy did not see clearly enough how little
difference there is between doing right and failing to do right, or
how much difference between promising with the lips and promising
with the heart.

While his little sister, as he still called her, lay between life
and death, Teddy said to himself that the excitement of seeing her
friends might be fatal to her, and that, if she should die, their
grief in this second loss would be greater than what they were now
suffering.

When she began slowly to recover, he said that they would only be
frightened at seeing her so wasted and weak, and that he would keep
her until she had recovered something of her good looks; and,
finally, he had begun to think that it would be no more than fair