"Be calm, madam." The Doctor is very calm.
"I am calm," says your mother; but you do not think it, for you see her
tremble very plainly.
"Dear madam, he will never waken in this world!"
There is no cry,--only a bowing down of your mother's head upon the body
of poor dead Charlie!--and only when you see her form shake and quiver
with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud and
strong.
The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may see that pale
head,--those blue eyes all sunken,--that flaxen hair gone,--those white
lips pinched and hard!--Never, never will the boy forget his first
terrible sight of Death!
In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs has wearied you, the
boy-dreams are strange and earnest. They take hold on that awful
Visitant,--that strange slipping away from life, of which we know so
little, and yet know, alas, so much! Charlie that was your brother, is
now only a name: perhaps he is an angel; perhaps (for the old nurse has
said it when he was ugly--and now you hate her for it) he is with Satan!
But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure that God, who made him
suffer, would not now quicken and multiply his suffering.
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