He goes on into the
next room.
He finds the nurse looking awful funny, and
bending over the dead kid. She is putting a look-
ing-glass to its lips. He asts her why.
She says she thought she might be mistaken after
all. She couldn't say jest WHEN it died. It was
alive and feeble, and then purty soon it showed no
signs of life. It was like it hadn't had enough
strength to stay and had jest went. I didn't show
any pulse, and it didn't appear to be breathing.
And she had watched it and done everything be-
fore she beckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that
it was dead. But as she come back into the room
where it was she thought she noticed something
that was too light to be called a real flutter move its
eyelids, which she had closed down over its eyes.
It was the ghost of a move, like it had tried to raise
the lids, or they had tried to raise theirselves, and
had been too weak. So she has got busy and
wrapped a hot cloth around it, and got a drop of
brandy or two between its lips, and was fighting to
bring it back to life. And thought she was doing
it. Thought she had felt a little flutter in its chest,
and was trying if it had breath at all.
Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner
fambly has always been at home. And how high
they had always held their heads.
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