The Happy Visitor

 

Jessie remembers differently

  When I go in there the room smells funny, and hot, and I tell myself that this time I am going to be a good sister, and take his poor thin hand, and stroke his hot face, but then he says something hateful and I can’t hold it back, I want to squeeze his miserable little cheeks until they have crumbled to nothing.

I want to be good like the little children in books, Little Nell and Tiny Tim or Sara Crewe, giving her only bread to the starving child. But I am a disagreeable child and when Mother sends me to our room I pinch my own fat cheeks and cry.

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The mother was nicer still and made sure he had all the sweet cookies he could eat. She gave him his baths, and made him eat his carrots. In the evenings as it grew dark outside the windows she would come in and lay a cool hand on his forehead, and just as he drifted off to sleep she would kiss his cheek.

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