She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice.
She had to be checked and put to bed, lest she be
tired out.
"I never knew that child could talk so much," Sarah
said to Daniel, after the little girl had gone up-stairs.
"She talks quite some when she's alone with me."
"And she seems to see everything."
"Ain't much that child don't see," said Daniel,
proudly.
The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel
never again succumbed. When autumn came, for
the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was
sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and
the winter upon his precious little Dan'l, whom he
put before himself as fondly as any father could
have done, and as the season progressed his dread
seemed justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after
cold. Content Adams and Lucy Rose came to see
her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties.
But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel
began to look forward to spring and summer -- the
seasons which had been his bugaboos through life
-- as if they were angels. When the February thaw
came, he told little Dan'l, "Jest look at the snow
meltin' and the drops hangin' on the trees; that is
a sign of summer."
Old Daniel watched for the first green light along
the fences and the meadow hollows. When the trees
began to cast slightly blurred shadows, because of
budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the
terraces, and now and then the air was cleft with
blue wings, he became jubilant.
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