Family Pride; Or, Purified by SufferingHolmes, Mary Jane
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Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction; Dime novels
There was a low shriek and baby opened its heavy lids and moaned, while
Helen came at once to Katy, holding her hand upon her heart as if the
pain had entered there. To Marian it was no news, for ever since the
early morning she had suspected the nature of the disease stealing over
the little child, so suddenly stricken down, and looking by the
lamplight so pale and sick. All night the light burned in the farmhouse,
where there were anxious, troubled faces, Katy bending constantly over
her darling, and even amid her terrible anxiety dreading Wilford's
displeasure when he should hear what she had done and its possible
result. She did not believe as yet that her child would die; but she
suffered acutely, watching for the early dawn when Morris had said he
would be there, and when at last he came, begging of him to stay, to
leave his other patients and care only for baby.
"Would that be right?" Morris asked, and Katy blushed for her
selfishness when she heard how many were sick and dying around them. "I
will spend every leisure moment here," he said, leaving his directions
with Marian and then hurrying away without a word of hope for the child,
growing worse so fast that when the night shut down again it lay upon a
pillow, its blue eyes closed and its head thrown back, while its sad
moanings could only be hushed by carrying it in one's arms about the
room, a task which Katy could not do.
She had tried it once, refusing all their offers with the reply: "Baby
is mine and shall I not carry her?"
But the feeble strength gave out, the limbs began to totter, and
staggering backward she cried: "Somebody must take her."
It was Marian who went forward, Marian, whose face was a puzzle as she
took the infant in her stronger arms, her stony eyes, which had not wept
as yet, fastening themselves upon the face of Wilford Cameron's child
with a look which seemed to say: "Retribution, retribution."
But only when she remembered the father, now so proud of his daughter,
was that word in her heart. She could not harbor it when she glanced at
the mother, and her lips moved in earnest prayer that, if possible, God
would not leave her so desolate. An hour later and Morris came,
relieving Marian of her burden which he carried in his own arms, while
he strove to comfort Katy, who, crouching by the empty crib, was sitting
motionless in a kind of dumb despair, all hope crushed out by his answer
to her entreaties that he would tell her the truth, keeping nothing
back.
"I think your baby will die," he had said to her very gently, pausing a
moment in awe of the white face, whose expression terrified and shocked
him, it was so full of agony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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