Tears coursed down Molly's cheeks also, and Eddie, hardly less overcome
than his sister, asked tremulously, "How soon may we expect them,
grandpa?"
"In about two days, I think; and my dear children, we must school
ourselves to meet Lily with calmness and composure, lest we injure, by
exciting and agitating her. We must be prepared to find her more feeble
than when she went away, and much exhausted by the fatigue of the
journey."
Worse than when she went away! and even then the doctors gave no hope! It
was almost as if they already saw her lying lifeless before them.
They wept themselves to sleep that night, and in the morning it was as
though death had already entered the house; a solemn stillness reigned in
all its rooms, and the quiet tread, the sad, subdued tones, the oft
falling tear, attested the warmth of affection in which the dear, dying
child was held.
A parlor car was speeding southward; its occupants, a noble looking man, a
lovely matron, a blooming, beautiful girl of seventeen, a rosy babe in his
nurse's arms, and a pale, fragile, golden-haired, blue-eyed child of
seven, lying now on a couch with her head in her mother's lap, now resting
in her father's arms for a little.
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