It shapes at your bedside the loved figure
of your mother, or it calls up the whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys
and weeks of study or of play group like magic on your quickened vision;
then a twinge of pain will call again the dreariness, and your head
tosses upon the pillow, and your eye searches the gloom vainly for
pleasant faces; and your fears brood on that drearier, coming night of
Death--far longer, and far more cheerless than this.
But even here the memory of some little prayer you have been taught,
which promises a Morning after the Night, comes to your throbbing brain;
and its murmur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, soothes like a
caress of angels, and woos you to smiles and sleep.
As the days pass, you grow stronger; and Frank comes in to tell you of
the school, and that your old tormentor has been expelled; and you grow
into a strong friendship with Frank, and you think of yourselves as a
new Damon and Pythias, and that you will some day live together in a
fine house, with plenty of horses, and plenty of chestnut-trees. Alas,
the boy counts little on those later and bitter fates of life, which
sever his early friendships like wisps of straw!
At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim figure of the Doctor,
and upon his huge bunch of watch-seals, you think you will some day be a
Doctor; and that with a wife and children, and a respectable gig, and
gold watch, with seals to match, you would needs be a very happy fellow.
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