“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 right 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.