Wilton School | Page 9

of the extent of the fault of cribbing. Most boys would have said: "I shall get a good caning, but I can get my crib again soon enough."
It was a lady who was with Mrs Campbell; so Harry knew from the voice, which was soft and sweet. She was talking quietly to his mother about her death; and as the words fell upon the silence. Harry listened eagerly for every syllable, nervous and trembling, and grew more miserable as each minute stole wearily by.
"It wouldn't have been so hard to die," Mrs Campbell was saying, "if he could only have been with me till the last. Dear Alan! I wonder where he is now?"
"Yet think, dear Mrs Campbell, how he is spared the pain of seeing you suffer," said the doctor's wife, for it was she. "You love him well enough, I know, to enable you to think this, don't you?"
"Oh, yes! yes!" answered the dying wife. "God knows what is for our good. It may have saved him much pain and sorrow. Dear Alan!" and her voice grew very low. She was talking half to herself. Then, as the new thought flashed across, she said again aloud, "But what will become of Harry when I am gone, and Alan out at sea?"
And Harry, where he sat on the stairs in the deepening dusk, burst into tears. His mother's quick ears caught the sound of his sobs, and she exclaimed:
"Why, there is Harry crying on the stairs? Tell him to come in, will you, Mrs Bromley?"
Harry needed no telling. He was soon in the room, at his mother's bedside, and clasped in her arms.
"Don't cry, Harry, darling," the weak voice said. "Don't cry so!"
"You aren't really going to die, mamma? What shall I do without you?--all alone--and--and Dr Palmer won't believe me. I know he won't," sobbed Harry.
"Dr Palmer won't believe you? What is it, dear? and what is the matter with your face? Oh, Harry, you haven't been fighting, have you?" she added, and her voice bore shadow of reproach in it.
"Yes, mamma, I have," answered Harry, "but I didn't begin; they all set on me, and shied balls at me, and said I cribbed, and called me a liar and a coward, and I fought Warburton, and licked him," and then came the English schoolboy's triumphant glance, through his tearful eyes.
"Said you cribbed? When, dear? How?" asked Mrs Campbell. "Tell me all about it."
And, then, when the two had at length succeeded in quieting Harry, he began his story. Through excitement, it was naturally very confused at first, but, by degrees, he had made everything plain.
"But why don't you tell Dr Palmer that it was Egerton's crib? and all that you saw in morning school?" said Mrs Campbell.
"Yes," chimed in the doctor's wife, "you can tell him you distinctly saw Egerton using the book."
"That's no good, mamma," answered Harry, despondingly. "He wouldn't believe me. He'd say I put it off on Egerton, because he was next me in class."
"What is to be done?" said Mrs Bromley. "I quite see what the poor boy means."
"Never mind, Harry, dear, tell the truth, as I know you will," said Mrs Campbell, "and it will all go well with you. Egerton will be found out sooner or later, and Dr Palmer will be sorry if he has punished you for nothing."
"I shall tell Mr Bromley to go and speak to Dr Palmer. That horrid boy, Egerton! I could give him a good shaking!" said Mrs Bromley, excitedly. "And now, dear Mrs Campbell, I must go. I will try and send you round some grapes in the morning. They will be so good for your thirst. I shall come and see you again soon. Keep up," she added, in a whisper. "Think of what we have been saying. God is but calling you to a better country, and He will guard your motherless boy!"
"He will! He will, I know! Good-bye. You are so good and kind to me. Come again soon, won't you?"
"Come, Harry," said the doctor's wife, turning to him, "come down with me, and Mrs Valentine will give you your tea."
"And ask her to bathe your face, dear boy," added Mrs Campbell, "and put a vinegar pad on it."
And then Mrs Bromley, kissing her affectionately, led Harry from the room, looking wistfully at his mother as he went.
"Ah, Alan, darling Alan!" she sighed, when she was alone in the silent twilight of the room, "if you were only here, it would be so much easier to die! Just to say good-bye once more. And you'll only see my grave when you come home. Oh, God," she prayed, "forgive me, and take me to Thyself." And then her words grew wandering. "Scotland with uncle Robert--how rough the waves are!--when shall we get