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But, for many days, Oliver remained insensible to all the
goodness of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and
sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay
stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and
wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the
dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living
frame.

Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to
have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in
the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked
anxiously around.

'What room is this? Where have I been brought to?' said Oliver.
'This is not the place I went to sleep in.'

He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and
weak; but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed's
head was hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly
and precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair
close by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work.

'Hush, my dear,' said the old lady softly. 'You must be very
quiet, or you will be ill again; and you have been very bad,--as
bad as bad could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again; there's a
dear!' With those words, the old lady very gently placed
Oliver's head upon the pillow; and, smoothing back his hair from
his forehead, looked so kindly and loving in his face, that he
could not help placing his little withered hand in hers, and
drawing it round his neck.

'Save us!' said the old lady, with tears in her eyes. 'What a
grateful little dear it is. Pretty creetur! What would his
mother feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him
now!'

'Perhaps she does see me,' whispered Oliver, folding his hands
together; 'perhaps she has sat by me. I almost feel as if she
had.'

'That was the fever, my dear,' said the old lady mildly.

'I suppose it was,' replied Oliver, 'because heaven is a long way
off; and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of
a poor boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me,
even there; for she was very ill herself before she died. She
can't know anything about me though,' added Oliver after a
moment's silence. 'If she had seen me hurt, it would have made
her sorrowful; and her face has always looked sweet and happy,
when I have dreamed of her.'

The old lady made no reply to this; but wiping her eyes first,
and her spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as
if they were part and parcel of those features, brought some cool
stuff for Oliver to drink; and then, patting him on the cheek,
told him he must lie very quiet, or he would be ill again.

So, Oliver kept very still; partly because he was anxious to obey
the kind old lady in all things; and partly, to tell the truth,
because he was completely exhausted with what he had already
said. He soon fell into a gentle doze, from which he was
awakened by the light of a candle: which, being brought near the
bed, showed him a gentleman with a very large and loud-ticking

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