T was not for several days after this that Winifred was able to pay her visit to the little sick boy at the lodge.
It seemed as if the night-watch for the swallows, and the day of hard work which followed, had tired the little girl more than at first appeared, and for a good many days following she was very weak and poorly, and could only just creep from the night to the day-nursery and back again; and even reading story-books tired her head and made her eyes ache. The utmost she could do was to work at the red mittens she was knitting for little Phil, and it was not always that she could even do this.
“It’s almost like being ill again,” she said one day to her mother, as she lay in her arms nestling her little curly head against the supporting shoulder. “I was so much better in the summer. Am I always going to get ill when the winter comes? I try to be good; but I do get very tired.”
“My darling, I know you do,” answered the mother tenderly. “But I think my little girl will be better soon—not ill a very long while.”
“I am glad,” said Winnie; but she could not quite understand why mamma’s voice sounded sad when she told her this, nor why a great bright tear rolled down from her dear eyes and fell down upon her own curls. Why should mamma cry if she were soon going to get well?
But Winifred was learning not to ask questions upon some subjects. She still believed she was going away, and that it was the thought of the parting that made her mother sad; but as yet no one had mentioned the matter to her, and she had refrained herself from alluding to it in any way. She never felt quite certain whether or not it had been a dream.
He set her upon the stile where she could see everything.—
Winifred had thought a great deal during these past days. She was not unhappy, and yet a sort of weight seemed to hang upon her. She could not get rid of the idea that some great change was drawing near, and the idea made her feel serious and thoughtful. She read her little Bible as she had never read it before, and especially any parts where it told about birds or angels, and about Jesus Christ noticing or blessing little children.
Winifred wished so much that Jesus was living on earth now, that she could go to Him and ask Him to take her in His arms and bless her. She could love the dear Lord Jesus very much, she knew, if only she could go to Him like that. It was so different from saying prayers at her bedside.
She did not speak of these thoughts and fancies even to her mother; they were hardly clear enough to her own self to be uttered in words to a grown-up person. And she never told her dream, either, about the swallows and the angel, although she thought very much about it. She fancied perhaps it would make mamma sad, though why she should have this fancy she could not tell.
When she began to feel better again these fancies still haunted her, although she had expected them to go away; and even when she was so far well that she was able to drive out with her mother one sunny afternoon, and be put down at the lodge to talk to Phil till the carriage returned, she still felt grave and serious—not merry and gay as she had done on former occasions when she was first allowed out after a few days’ detention in the house after any little attacks of illness.
Little Phil’s face was very bright when he saw his visitor enter. The sick boy led a lonely life, for there were very few people who ever passed that way, and a visitor was a rare treat to one who could never leave his couch to run about, but always had to wait for somebody to come and see him.
“Miss Winnie!” he cried joyously, “how kind of you to come! I was afraid I’d not see you again all the winter when I heard how poorly you’d been. I am so glad!”
Phil was twelve years old, although he was so small that he was always spoken of as “little Phil.” His spine was diseased, and he had not grown since he was seven years old; but he had thought a great deal whilst lying on his bed or couch, and his mind was of a thoughtful, devotional bent, which sometimes led people to say that he was “too good to live.”
Winnie had known him all her life, and a sort of intimacy had grown up between the two children. At one time the little girl had been a constant visitor at the lodge, but since her long illness this habit had been broken through; and little Phil had sadly missed the visits to which he had grown used—missed them more than Winnie had ever imagined.
“I am better to-day, Phil, and mamma said she would drive me to see you. Are you any better?”
“No, Miss Winnie, I don’t suppose I’ll ever be better; but I’m used to it, and it don’t make me fret—leastways not often.”
“Only when the pain is very bad?” suggested Winifred compassionately, contrasting in her own mind, as she had never done before, the difference between this boy’s lot and her own.
“Well, Miss Winnie, I don’t think it’s the pain as I mind most; I’m kind of used even to that; ’tis the lonesomeness as makes me fret sometimes.”
“Lonesomeness!”
“Why yes, you see, there ain’t hardly any folks to come in and chat a bit, and I can’t get to school; and I’ve read all my books till I know them by heart; and since you’ve been so weak like and poorly there hasn’t seemed anything to make the time pass.”
Winnie’s heart smote her sorely, and her face flushed suddenly with pain and shame. She knew it had more often been idleness than weakness which had kept her during the past months from visiting Phil as before; and certainly there could be no excuse for forgetting to lend him books, as she had always done before, from her well-filled shelves. When she thought of the piles of brightly-bound story-books which had been showered upon her during her tardy convalescence, she hardly knew how to look Phil in the face, so ashamed did she feel of her neglect.
“I am so sorry, Phil,” she faltered, blushing and looking down.
“Oh, don’t you trouble about it, Miss Winnie. Folks didn’t ought to fret for little troubles like that. Besides, I think sometimes it’s done me good, all that thinking I had time for then.”
Winifred drew a little nearer, interested by the look on Phil’s face.
“What did you think about?”
“Oh, ever such a lot of things; and by-and-by it seemed quite clear.”
“What seemed clear?”
“Why, that it was wrong to fret as I’d been doing—wrong to feel so lonesome.”
“But why was it wrong?”
“Because it seemed kind of not trusting the Lord Jesus. He said He’d always be with us to take care of us and comfort us; and sure enough He is, if only we’ll just look up and find Him.”
Winifred looked awed and reverent.
“Did you look up and find Him, Phil?”
“I did after a bit; but it was a good while before I seemed able to see Him.”
Winifred sighed, and looked wistful.
“I wish I could do that. I do so wish Jesus lived down here, so that we could just go and see Him and talk to Him, then it would be all so nice. Heaven seems such a long way off; it doesn’t seem as if He could see us or hear us right away there.”
“Well, just at first perhaps it doesn’t,” answered Phil, with a far-away look in his eyes, “but that feeling goes off by-and-by, and He seems quite near—at least he does to me; and I know, just as well as if I could see Him, that He’s listening to me, and that He loves me, just as He loved those little children as He blessed when He did live down here.”
“Do you feel like that, Phil?” said Winifred. “I wish I could too.”
“I think you will, Miss Winnie, if you think much about Him, and ask Him to help you to see Him. It seems as if He likes folks to ask Him things, so as He can give them what they want; leastways, it has always seemed so to me.”
“Do you like thinking about Jesus?” asked Winnie, after a few minutes’ silence.
“Why, yes, to be sure I do. You see—you see—” and there Phil paused.
“What, Phil?”
“You see, Miss Winnie, I can’t help thinking as I shall go to Him before so very long. Folks don’t tell me so, but I can kind of see it in their faces, and it sets me thinking.”
Winifred looked grave and awed. She hesitated a little before she could bring herself to ask the next question, and when she did so it was in a very low voice.
“Do you mean that you think you will die soon, Phil?”
“Why, yes, Miss Winnie; I know the doctor doesn’t think I can live very much longer.”
Winifred’s face was very grave and rather pale; she drew a little nearer the boy’s couch.
“Doesn’t it make you frightened to think about dying, Phil?” she said.
“Not now, Miss Winnie; it did once. I was ever so much afraid at first, and couldn’t bear to believe it. But I couldn’t help thinking about it, do what I would, and now I don’t feel a bit afraid.”
“I think I should be afraid,” said Winnie.
“Not if you loved Jesus,” answered the boy, with a sudden smile like sunshine lighting all his face.
“I think now I am glad to go, if it is His will to take me.”
“Glad!”
“Why, you see, Miss Winnie, I’m not like other lads. I can’t do no work in the world, I can only lie here and bear the pain. I’d be ashamed to fret and make a fuss over it, when the Lord bore such a deal more for us; but it do make me glad to think as it won’t last always, and that He will call me soon to come to Him, where there won’t be any more pain to bear or any sorrow either.”
Something in the words struck a chord of memory in Winifred’s heart.
“That’s just what the angel said to me—no pain, and no sorrow,” she said in a dreamy way. “Will He send an angel for you, Phil?”
“Sometimes I fancy He will, Miss Winnie; but we don’t know His ways, we can only guess.”
“I wonder if He will send my angel,” said the child, still intent on her own thought.
“Your angel, Miss Winnie?”
“Yes, the one that came the other night to teach me how naughty I had been. Oh, I forgot, you don’t know, I had such a dream a few nights ago, Phil, I think I should like to tell it to you.”
So Winifred told her strange dream, and Phil listened with absorbed attention.
“That was a nice dream, Miss Winnie,” he said at the close. “You wouldn’t be afraid to go away with the angel, would you?”
“Oh no. I don’t think I should be afraid to go with the angel—only I should be afraid, I think, to die.”
“But,” said Phil in a slow, thoughtful way, “I think dying just means going away with God’s angel. I don’t think there’s any difference.”
Winifred was silent awhile, and then said slowly:
“If that’s it, Phil, perhaps I shouldn’t be afraid, for I do love Jesus, and I should like to see Him. Phil, do you think the angel will come for me soon?”
Phil looked at the child, his great hollow eyes full of thought, and answered gravely;
“I don’t know, Miss Winnie.”
“I am not ill like you, am I?”
“No, not like me.”
“Do you think I am ill?”
“Some folks think so, Miss Winnie, by all I hear; but nobody can tell when we shall die except God, and it can’t much matter so long as He knows, can it?”
Winnie sat grave and pensive for a long while; but there was no fear in her face, hardly any surprise. Both children were too much in earnest to feel that anything strange had passed between them.
“I wonder if that is what they meant. I wonder if I am going there when the swallows go.”