woke at last from what seemed to have
been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the bed,
with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously around.

'What room is this? Where have I been brought to?' said Oliver. 'This
is not the place I went to sleep in.'

He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak;
but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed's head was
hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely
dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which
she had been sitting at needle-work.

'Hush, my dear,' said the old lady softly. 'You must be very quiet, or
you will be ill again; and you have been very bad,--as bad as bad could
be, pretty nigh. Lie down again; there's a dear!' With those words,
the old lady very gently placed Oliver's head upon the pillow; and,
smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and loving
in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand in
hers, and drawing it round his neck.

'Save us!' said the old lady, with tears in her eyes. 'What a grateful
little dear it is. Pretty creetur! What would his mother feel if she
had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!'

'Perhaps she does see me,' whispered Oliver, folding his hands
together; 'perhaps she has sat by me. I almost feel as if she had.'

'That was the fever, my dear,' said the old lady mildly.

'I suppose it was,' replied Oliver, 'because heaven is a long way off;
and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of a poor
boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me, even there;
for she was very ill herself before she died. She can't know anything
about me though,' added Oliver after a moment's silence. 'If she had
seen me hurt, it would have made her sorrowful; and her face has always
looked sweet and happy, when I have dreamed of her.'

The old lady made no reply to this; but wiping her eyes first, and her
spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they were
part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for Oliver
to drink; and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he must lie very
quiet, or he would be ill again.

So, Oliver kept very still; partly because he was anxious to obey the
kind old lady in all things; and partly, to tell the truth, because he
was completely exhausted with what he had already said. He soon fel