University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
THE CACHUCA.

Ten days more, and beside the fire in Mrs. Ginniss's
attic-room sat a little figure, propped in the wooden rocking-chair
with pillows and comfortables; while upon a small
stand close beside her were arranged a few cheap toys, a
plate with some pieces of orange upon it, a sprig of geranium
in a broken-nosed pitcher of water, and a cup of beef-tea.

But for none of these did the languid little invalid seem
to care; and lying back in the chair, her head nestled into
the pillow, her parched lips open, and her eyes half closed,
she looked so little like the bright and glowing 'Toinette
who had danced at her birthday-party not a month before,
that it is a question if any one but her own mother would
have believed her to be the same.

Mrs. Ginniss, hard at work upon the frills of a fashionable
lady's skirt, paused every few moments to look over her
shoulder at the little wasted face with the wistful look of

some dumb creature who sees its offspring suffering, and
cannot tell how to relieve it.

Suddenly setting the flat-iron she had just taken back
upon the stove, the washwoman came and bent over the
child, looking earnestly into her face.

“An' it's waker an' whiter she gits every day. Sure
and I'm afther seeing the daylight through the little hands
uv her; and her eyes is that big, they take the breath uv me
whin I mate 'em. See, darlint! — see the purty skip-jack
Teddy brought ye!”

She took from the table the toy she named, and, pulling
the string, made the figure of the man vault over the top
of the stick and back several times, crying at the same
time, —

“Hi, thin! — hi, thin! See how the crather joomps,
honey!”

But, although the languid eyes of the child followed her
motions for a moment, no shadow of a smile stirred the
parched lips; and presently the eyes closed, as if the effort
were too much for them.

Mrs. Ginniss laid the toy upon the table, and took up the
cup of beef-tea.

“Have a soop of yer dhrink, darlint?” said she, tenderly

holding the cup to the child's lips, and raising her head
with the other hand; but, with a moan of impatience or distress,
the weary head turned itself upon the pillow, and the
little wasted hand half rose to push away the cup.

“An' what is it I'll plaze ye wid, mavourneen? Do
yees want Teddy to coom home?” asked the poor woman
in despair.

A faint murmur of assent crept from between the parched
lips; and the eyes, slowly opening, glanced toward the door.

“It's this minute he'll be here, thin,” said the wash-woman
joyfully. “An' faith yees ought to love him, honey;
for he'd give the two eyes out of his head to plaze yees, an'
git down on his knees to thank yees for takin' 'em. Now,
thin, don't ye hear his fut upon the stair?”

But the heavy steps coming up the stairs were not
Teddy's, as his mother well knew; and although, when they
stopped upon the landing below her own, she pretended to
be much surprised, she would, in reality, have been much
more so if they had not stopped.

“And it's Jovarny it wor that time, honey,” said she
soothingly: “but Teddy'll coom nixt; see if he doun't,
Cherry darlint.”

But Cherry, closing her eyes, with no effort at reply, lay

as motionless upon her pillow as if she had been asleep or
in a swoon.

Suddenly, from the room below, was heard a strain of
plaintive music. The organ-grinder, for some reason or
other, was trying his instrument in his own room; although,
remembering the sick child above, he played as softly and
slowly as he could. It was the first time he had done so
since Cherry had been ill; and Mrs. Ginniss anxiously
watched her face to see what effect the sounds would have.

The air was “Kathleen Mavourneen;” and, as one tender
strain succeeded another, the watchful nurse could see a
faint color stealing into the child's face, while from between
the half-closed lids her eyes shone brighter than they had
for many a day.

“If it plazes her, I'll pay him to grind away all day, the
crather,” murmured she joyfully.

The song ended, and, after a little pause, was succeeded
by a lively dancing-tune.

“She'll not like that so well,” thought Mrs. Ginniss; but,
to her great astonishment, the child, after listening a
moment, started upright in her chair, her eyes wide open
and shining with excitement, her cheeks glowing, and her
little hands fluttering.

“Mamma, mamma! I'm Cherritoe! and I can dance
with that music, and mamma can play it more” —

The words faltered upon her lips, and she sank suddenly
back upon the pillows in a death-faint. At the same moment,
Teddy came bounding up the stairs and into the
room.

“Go an' shtop that fool's noise if yees brain him, an' ax
him what's the name o' that divil's jig he's playing!” exclaimed
Mrs. Ginniss as she caught sight of the boy; and
Teddy, without stopping for a question, hastily obeyed.

In a moment he was back.

“It's the cachuca, mother; but what's the matter with
the little sister?”

“Whist! She's swounded wid the noise he's afther
making,” replied his mother angrily, as she laid the
wasted little figure upon her bed, and bathed the temples
with cold water.

Teddy stood anxiously looking on. Ever since the night
when the little sister's fever had turned, and the doctor had
promised that she should live, a struggle had been going on
in the boy's heart. He could not but believe that God had
given back the almost-departed life in answer to his earnest
prayer and promise; and he had no intention of breaking

the promise, or withholding the price he felt himself to have
offered for that life. But, like many older and better
taught persons, Teddy did not see clearly enough how little
difference there is between doing wrong and failing to do
right, or how much difference between promising with the
lips and promising with the heart.

While his little sister, as he still called her, lay between
life and death, Teddy said to himself that the excitement
of seeing her friends might be fatal to her, and that, if she
should die, their grief in this second loss would be greater
than what they were now suffering.

When she began slowly to recover, he said that they
would only be frightened at seeing her so wasted and weak,
and that he would keep her until she had recovered something
of her good looks; and, finally, he had begun to think
that it would be no more than fair that he should repay
himself for all the sorrow and anxiety her illness had given
him by keeping her a little while after she was quite well
and strong, and could go for a walk with him, and see the
beautiful shops, with their Christmas-wares displayed.

“New Year's will be soon enough. I'll take her to the
master for a New-Year's gift,” Teddy had said to himself
that very night as he came up the stairs; and a sort of

satisfaction crept into his heart in thinking that he had at
least fixed a date for fulfilling his promise.

But New-Year's Day found 'Toinette, or Cherry as we
must learn to call her, more unlike her former self than
she had been when he formed the resolution. The strange
emotion that had overcome her in listening to the organ-grinder's
music had caused a relapse into fever, followed by
other troubles; and spite of Dr. Wentworth's constant care,
Mrs. Ginniss's patient and tender nursing, and Teddy's
devotion, the child seemed pining away without hope or
remedy.

“I'll wait till the spring comes, anyway,” said Teddy to
himself. “Maybe the warm weather will bring her round,
and I'll hear her laugh out once, and take her for just one
walk on the Commons before I carry her to the master.”