"But she sweats so, nights!"

"Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after
night, my clothes will be wringing wet. There won't be a
dry thread in my night-clothes, and the sheets will be so
that Mammy has to hang them up to dry! Eva does n't
sweat anything like that!"

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now
that Eva was fairly and visibly prostrated, and a doctor
called, Marie, all on a sudden, took a new turn.

She knew it, she said; she always felt it, that she was
destined to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she
was, with her wretched health, and her only darling child
going down to the grave before her eyes! And Marie
routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded,
with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this
new misery.

"My dear Marie, don't talk so!" said St. Clare. "You
ought not to give up the case so, at once."

"You have not a mother's feelings, St. Clare. You
never could understand me! -- you don't now."

"But don't talk so, as if it were a gone case!"

"I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare.
If you don't feel when your only child is in this alarming
state, I do. It's a blow too much for me, with all I was
bearing before."

"It's true," said St. Clare, "that Eva is very delicate,
that I always knew; and that she has grown so rapidly as
to exhaust her strength; and that her situation is critical.
But just now she is only prostrated by the heat of the
weather, and by the excitement of her cousin's visit, and
the exertions she made. The physician says there is room
for hope."

"Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side,
pray do; it's a mercy if people have n't sensitive feelings,
in this world. I am sure! I wish I did n't feel as I do; it
only makes me completely wretched! I wish I could be
as easy as the rest of you!"

And the "rest of them" had good reason to breathe the
same prayer, for Marie paraded her new misery as the
reason and apology for all sorts of inflictions on every one
about her. Every word that was spoken by anybody,
everything that was done or was not done everywhere,

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