Donald was away at college now. Paul and Hugh were great manly
fellows, taller than their mother. Papa Bird had grey hairs in
his whiskers; and Grandma, God bless her, had been four
Christmases in heaven. But Christmas in the Birds' Nest was
scarcely as merry now as it used to be in the bygone years, for
the little child that once brought such an added blessing to the
day, lay, month after month, a patient, helpless invalid, in the
room where she was born.
She had never been very strong in body, and it was with a pang of
terror her mother and father noticed, soon after she was five
years old, that she began to limp, ever so slightly; to complain
too often of weariness, and to nestle close to her mother, saying
she "would rather not go out to play, please." The illness was
slight at first, and hope was always stirring in Mrs. Bird's
heart. "Carol would feel stronger in the summer-time;" or, "She
would be better when she had spent a year in the country;" or,
"She would outgrow it;" or, "They would try a new physician;" but
by and by it came to be all too sure that no physician save One
could make Carol strong again, and that no "summer-time" nor
"country air," unless it were the everlasting summer-time in a
heavenly country, could bring back the little girl to health.
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