Part 32 (1/2)
”Will you stay here all night?”
”All night, precious, if you'll be good and go fast asleep while I am singing.”
Holding tightly to her nightdress, Harry cuddled down between the pillows with a contented sigh. ”Then I don't mind about the marbles in my throat,” he said.
”But mamma minds, and she wants to cure them before morning. Now lie very still while she wraps this good flannel bandage over the sore places.”
”I'll lie very still if you'll hold me, mamma.”
Blowing out the candle, she crept into the little bed beside him, and lay singing softly until his hands released their desperate grasp of her nightdress, and he slipped quietly off to sleep. Even then, remembering her promise, she did not go back to her bedroom until daylight.
”I wonder what makes Harry so afraid of the dark?” she asked, when Oliver awoke and turned questioningly towards her. ”He worked himself really sick last night just from pure nervousness. I had to put camphorated oil on his throat and chest, and lie beside him until morning. He is sleeping quietly now, but it simply frightens me to death when one of them complains of sore throat.”
”You've spoiled him, that's what's the matter,” replied Oliver, yawning.
”As long as you humour him, he'll never outgrow these night terrors.”
”But how can you tell whether the fright makes him sick or sickness brings on the fright? His throat was really red, there's no doubt about that, but I couldn't see last night that it was at all ulcerated.”
”He gives you more trouble than both the other children put together.”
”Well, he's a boy, and boys do give one more trouble. But, then, you have less patience with him, Oliver.”
”That's because he's a boy, and I like boys to show some pluck even when they are babies. Lucy and Jenny never raise these midnight rows whenever they awake in the dark.”
”They are not nearly so sensitive. You don't understand Harry.”
”Perhaps I don't, but I can see that you are ruining him.”
”Oh, Oliver! How can you say such a cruel thing to me?”
”I didn't mean to be cruel, Jinny, and you know it, but all the same it makes me positively sick to see you make a slave of yourself over the children. Why, you look as if you hadn't slept for a week. You are positively haggard.”
”But I have to be up with Harry when he is ill. How in the world could I help it?”
”You know he kicks up these rows almost every night, and you humour every one of his whims as if it were the first one. Don't you ever get tired?”
”Of course I do, but I can't let my child suffer even if it is only from fear. You haven't any patience, Oliver. Don't you remember the time when you used to be afraid of things?”
”I was never afraid of the dark in my life. No sensible child is, if he is brought up properly.”
”Do you mean I am not bringing up my children----” Her tears choked her and she could not finish the sentence.
”I don't mean anything except that you are making an old woman of yourself before your time. You've let yourself go until you look ten years older than----”
He checked himself in time, but she understood without his words that he had started to say, ”ten years older than Abby.” Yes, Abby did look young--amazingly young--but, then, what else had she to think of?
She lay down, but she was trembling so violently that she sat up quickly again in order to recover her self-possession more easily. It seemed to her that the furious beating of her heart must make him understand how he had wounded her. It was the first discussion approaching a quarrel they had had since their marriage, for she, who was so pliable in all other matters, had discovered that she could become as hard as iron where the difference related to Harry.
”You are unjust, Oliver. I think you ought to see it,” she said in a voice which she kept by an effort from breaking.
”I'll never see it, Jinny,” and some dogged impulse to hurt her more made him add, ”It's for Harry's sake as well as yours that I'm speaking.”