The room was close under the roof, open to the tiles, and was very bare, but neat and orderly. On a mattress in the corner lay the little sufferer, while by him sat his crippled sister, nearly as pale and thin as he. "My child," said Jem in a kind voice, addressing her, "do you think if I brought you a blanket you could keep it from being stolen?" The child looked up suddenly. A face, with all its want and suffering, on which something indescribable was written. Jem did not analyze it, but he felt it. "I think so," she answered. "I know a place outside up under the roof where I could hide it away if I go out. That's what I have to do with most things as it is." Meg seated herself on the box by the child's side and looked down on his little face. She put his wavy hair back from his forehead and said tenderly-- "Poor little dear, you have a bad cough!" "Yes," said the child; "me cough all de time." "Yes," pursued his sister. "Dickie's been bad this five weeks, and if it hadn't been for father having a bit of work, and bringin' home a little for once, he'd ha' died." Dickie did not seem to mind being thus spoken of, but he turned his head wearily away, as if it were too much trouble to think. "I like bein' ill," he whispered, as Meg bent over him. "Like it, dear?" she questioned, thinking she had not heard aright. He nodded ever so slightly, and then added in a little determined voice-- "'Cause then they don't _hurt_ me no more." Meg would have asked for an explanation, but Jem was unfolding the blanket, and the girl was absorbed in wonder at its comfort and whiteness. "Dickie, look!" she exclaimed in a low joyful tone. But the child was too ill to be interested. He did not turn his head again, and Cherry said, with all the life gone out of her eyes, which had so quickly lighted up at sight of the blanket-- "That's how he is most times. Sometimes I wish he was safely in heaven with mother." Jem put his hand gently on the girl's arm. "Ah, my dear, that's how we feel when we're sad; but if we understand that God loves us, we'll be willing to wait, so as we may do His will." Her wide-open, sad blue eyes filled slowly, and she turned in silence to cover over her little brother. She took up the old shawl and spread the blanket next him, then unfolding the shawl, which had been doubled for warmth, she carefully covered every bit of the blanket with it, even seeking a bit of rag from somewhere to stop up a hole through which the whiteness peeped. "He might guess it else," she explained, and her hearers had to draw their own conclusions. "Wouldn't he like him to have it?" questioned Jem. "He'd like drink better," answered Cherry, in a matter-of-fact tone. "Since poor father's taken to that so much, he don't have the heart he used to have, He wouldn't have took this attic for us, so comfortable, only the landlady let us have it cheap 'cause the other folks wouldn't have Dickie no longer." "Why, dear?" asked Meg pitifully.