d administered it in her
stead. The sick man looked at him occasionally, but he gave no sign of
recognition. However, his glance rested longer on the lad each time,
especially when the latter put his handkerchief to his eyes.

Thus passed the first day. At night the boy slept on two chairs, in a
corner of the ward, and in the morning he resumed his work of mercy.
That day it seemed as though the eyes of the sick man revealed a dawning
of consciousness. At the sound of the boy's caressing voice a vague
expression of gratitude seemed to gleam for an instant in his pupils,
and once he moved his lips a little, as though he wanted to say
something. After each brief nap he seemed, on opening his eyes, to seek
his little nurse. The doctor, who had passed twice, thought he noted a
slight improvement. Towards evening, on putting the cup to his lips, the
lad fancied that he perceived a very faint smile glide across the
swollen lips. Then he began to take comfort and to hope; and with the
hope of being understood, confusedly at least, he talked to him--talked
to him at great length--of his mother, of his little sisters, of his own
return home, and he exhorted him to courage with warm and loving words.
And although he often doubted whether he was heard, he still talked; for
it seemed to him that even if he did not understand him, the sick man
listened with a certain pleasure to his voice,--to that unaccustomed
intonation of affection and sorrow. And in this manner passed the second
day, and the third, and the fourth, with vicissitudes of slight
improvements and unexpected changes for the worse; and the boy was so
absorbed in all his cares, that he hardly nibbled a bit of bread and
cheese twice a day, when the sister brought it to him, and hardly saw
what was going on around him,--the dying patients, the sudden running up
of the sisters at night, the moans and despairing gestures of
visitors,--all those doleful and lugubrious scenes of hospital life,
which on any other occasion would have disconcerted and alarmed him.
Hours, days, passed, and still he was there with his daddy; watchful,
wistful, trembling at every sigh and at every look, agitated incessantly
between a hope which relieved his mind and a discouragement which froze
his heart.

On the fifth day the sick man suddenly grew worse. The doctor, on being
interrogated, shook his head, as much as to say that all was over, and
the boy flung himself on a chair and burst out sobb