felt
tears on my cheek; and her voice was broken as she said, "Katy, Katy! O,
thank God! I was afraid I never should see you again. Now I have
everything that I want in the world!"

It was hard to leave her when I was called so soon; but she knew that it
was right, and made me go; and when I was allowed to return to her, she
lay in obedient but most happy silence for all the rest of the evening,
with those new splendid eyes fixed on my face, her dim complexion
glowing, and her hands clasping mine. After I had put her to bed, and
laid myself down in my own beside her, I felt her reach out of hers and
touch me with a little pat two or three times, as a child will a new
doll, to make sure that it has not been merely dreaming of it. At first,
I asked her if she wanted anything; but she said, "Only to feel that you
are really there"; and when, after a very sound and long rest, I awoke,
there was her solemn, peaceful gaze still watching me, like that of an
unsleeping guardian angel. She had slept too, however, remarkably long
and well, whether for joy, as she thought, or from the opium which I had
been startled to see given her the night before. She said she had had
many scruples about taking it; but the Doctor insisted; and she did not
think it her duty on the whole to make him any trouble by opposing his
prescriptions, when we owed him so much. Poor Fanny! How hard it was for
her to owe any one "anything, but to love one another."

The Doctor's bulletin that morning was, "Remarkably comfortable." But in
the forenoon, while Fanny after breakfast took a nap, I snatched an
opportunity to cross-question Mrs. Physick, from whom I knew I could
sooner or later obtain all she knew,--the _sooner_ it would be, if she
had anything good to tell; as, in my inexperience, I was almost sure she
must have.

Fanny's "influenza," I now discovered, dated back to May. She kept her
room a few days, did not seem so ill as many fellow-patients who were
now quite well again, and soon resumed her usual habits, but was never
quite rid of her cough. Two or three weeks after, there was a
Sunday-school festival in the parish to which we belonged. She was
called upon to sing and assist in various ways, over-tasked her
strength, was caught in a shower, looked very sick, and being, on the
strength of Mrs. Physick's representations, formally escorted into the
office, was found to have a quick pulse and sharp pain in one side. This
led to a careful examin