One comfort, it can't
go on forever; it must kill me, before my time and so best. If I was
only a mother, and had a little Reginald to dandle on my knee and gloat
upon, till he spent his money, and came back to me. That's why I said I
wished I was his wife. Oh! why does God fill a poor woman's bosom with
love, and nothing to spend it on but a stone; for sure his heart must be
one. If I had only something that would let me always love it, a little
toddling thing at my knee, that would always let me look at it, and love
it, something too young to be false to me, too weak to run away from my
long--ing--arms--and--year--ning heart!" Then came a burst of agony,
and moans of desolation, till poor puzzled Dick blubbered loudly at her
grief; and then her tears flowed in streams.
Trouble on trouble. Dick himself got strangely out of sorts, and
complained of shivers. Phoebe sent him to bed early, and made him some
white wine whey very hot. In the morning he got up, and said he was
better; but after breakfast he was violently sick, and suffered several
returns of nausea before noon. "One would think I was poisoned," said
he.
At one o'clock he was seized with a kind of spasm in the throat that
lasted so long it nearly choked him.
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