“My dear child, no, indeed!  How came such horrible ideas in thy tender little brain?  It is too dreadful to think about; but, even if thy little sister had died, Susan, thee would have been no more to blame than thee is now, and a great, great deal more to be pitied.”

Susy sat for a long while gazing out of the window; but the stars did not wink so solemnly; the moon looked friendly once more.  Susy was drinking in her grandmother’s words of comfort.  The look of sadness was disappearing from the young face, and smiles began to play about the corners of her mouth.

“Well,” said she, starting up briskly, “I’m glad I wasn’t so very terribly wicked!  I wish I’d been somewhere else, when I stood on those back-stairs, in the middle of the night; but what’s the use?  I’m not going to think any more about it, grandma; for if I should think till my head was all twisted up in a knot, what good would it do?  It wouldn’t help Prudy any; would it, grandma?”

“No, dear,” said the mild, soothing voice again; “don’t think, I beg of thee; but if thee wants to know what would do Prudence good, I will tell thee:  try thy best to amuse her.  She has to lie day after day and suffer.  It is very hard for a little girl that loves to play, and can’t read, and doesn’t know how to pass the time; don’t thee think so, Susan?”

It was certainly hard.  Prudy’s round rosy face began to grow pale; and, instead of laughing and singing half the time, she would now lie and cry from pain, or because she really did not know what else to do with herself.

It was worst at night.  Hour after hour, she would lie awake, and listen to the ticking of the clock.  Susy thought it a pitiable case, when she, heard the clock strike once; but little Prudy heard it strike again and again.  How strangely it pounded out the strokes in the night!  What a dreary sound it was, pealing through the silence!  The echoes answered with a shudder.  Then, when Prudy had counted one, two, three, four, and the clock had no more to say at that time, it began to tick again:  “Prudy’s sick!  Prudy’s sick!  O, dear me!  O, dear me!”

Prudy could hardly believe it was the same clock she saw in the daytime.  She wondered if it felt lonesome in the night, and had the blues; or what could ail it!  The poor little girl wanted somebody to speak to in these long, long hours.  She did not sleep with Susy, but in a new cot-bed of her own, in aunt Madge’s room; for, dearly as she loved to lie close to any one she loved, she begged now to sleep alone, “so nobody could hit her, or move her, or joggle her.”

It was a great comfort to have aunt Madge so near.  If it had been Susy instead, Prudy would have had no company but the sound of her breathing.  It was of no use to try to wake Susy in the dead of night.  Pricking her with pins would startle her, but she never knew anything even after she was startled.  All she could do was to stare about her, cry, and act very cross, and then—­go to sleep again.