Mildred Keith - Complete 7 Book Collection. Finley Martha
do you stay here! I'd pack up everything and be off instanter."
"Necessity knows no law," she said. "Cyril, son, can you go down to the spring and get some fresh water for the sick ones?"
"Yes, ma'am; I'll take the biggest bucket; cause folks always want to drink so much water when the chill's on 'em."
"Cyril knows that by experience," his mother remarked as the boy left the room.
"Why do you speak of staying here as a necessity, Marcia?" asked her cousin. "You had as large a fortune from your mother as I from mine."
"Riches take wings, Horace, and a large family and unfortunate investments supplied them to mine."
She spoke cheerfully, jestingly, as though it were but occasion for mirth, but his tone was full of concern as he answered,
"Indeed I never knew that. It is a thousand pities! I wonder you can be so content and light-hearted as you seem."
"Ah, I have so much left! All my chiefest treasures,—husband, children, many great and precious promises for both this life and the next."
"Ah, but if you stay here, how long are you likely to keep husband and children? not to speak of the danger to your own life and health."
"Sickness and death find entrance everywhere in this sad world," she said; her voice trembling slightly, "and in all places we are under the same loving care. It seems our duty to stay here, and the path of duty is the safest. It is thought that in a few years this will become a healthy country."
"I hope so, indeed, for your sake, but it is a hard one for you in other ways. I am not so unobservant as not to have discovered that you do a great deal of your own work. And I don't like that it should be so, Marcia."
"You are very kind," she answered, smiling up brightly into his face as he stood looking down upon her with a vexed and anxious expression, "It is very nice to have you care so much for me, Horace."
"There's nobody in the world I care more for, Marcia," he said, "and going over some of our late talk, in my mind, I have thought there is nobody to whom I should so much like to commit the care and training of my child. I mean, of course, if your hands were not already full and more than full with your own."
"They are not so full that I would not gladly do a mother's part by her," she answered with emotion, "were it not for the danger of bringing her to this climate."
"Yes, that is the difficulty. It would never do, so miasmatic and so cold and bleak during a great part of the year; especially for one born so far south. But I thank you, cousin, all the same."
"We have not much sickness here except ague," she remarked presently, "but there are several varieties of that—chills and fever occurring at regular intervals—generally every other day at about the same hour; dumb ague, shaking ague, and sinking or congestive chills; which last are the only very alarming kind, sometimes proving fatal in a few hours."
"Indeed! you almost frighten me away," he said half seriously, half in jest. "That is not a very common form, I hope?"
"No, rather rare."
"Don't you send for the doctor?"
"Not often now; we did at first, but it is so frequent a visitor that we have learned to manage it ourselves."
The sickly season had fairly set in, and more afraid of it than he liked to acknowledge, Mr. Dinsmore hastened his departure, leaving for the East by the next stage.
Chapter Twentieth.
"I marked the Spring as she pass'd along,
With her eye of light and her lip of song;
While she stole in peace o'er the green earth's breast,
While the streams sprang out from their icy rest.
The buds bent low to the breeze's sigh,
And their breath went forth in the scented sky;
When the fields look'd fresh in their sweet repose,
And the young dews slept on the new-born rose."
—Willis Gaylord Clark.
"Well, I'm both glad and sorry Horace is gone," Mrs. Keith remarked with a smile, a sigh and a dewy look about her eyes, as the stage passed out of sight. "I'm fond of the lad, but was troubled lest the ague should get hold of him. Besides, the dearest of guests is something of a burden with sickness in the house and a scarcity of help."
"Yes, that is very true, mother," Mildred answered, "and so thoroughly do I realize it that I am wholly and heartily glad he's gone; albeit I liked him much better this time than I did before."
Celestia Ann had left months ago, and they had had very indifferent help during Mr. Dinsmore's visit, though fortunately such as they could keep away from the table when their guest was present at it.
Mildred went on now to express her satisfaction that such had been the case, adding, "What would he have done if Miss Hunsinger had been here, and in her usual fashion asserted her right to show that she felt herself as good as he or anybody else?"
"He'd have annihilated her with a look," laughed Rupert.
"He would have acted like the perfect gentleman he is," said Mrs. Keith, "but it would have been exceedingly mortifying to me to have him so insulted at my table; for as he has been brought up, he could not avoid feeling it an insult to be put on a social equality with one so rude and vulgar."
"The house feels lonely," said Zillah, "it seems 'most as if Aunt Wealthy had just gone away."
"We'll get our sewing and a book," said her mother, "Come all into the sitting-room. Rupert may be the reader this time.
"Mildred, you and I will have to be very busy now with the fall sewing."
"Yes mother dear; it's a blessing to have plenty of employment. But do you think I shall need to give up my studies for a time?"
"No, daughter, I hope not. I want you to go on with them; Mr. Lord says you are doing so nicely. Your cousin, too, told me he thought you were getting a better—more thorough—education with him, than you would be likely to in any school for girls that he knows of."
Mildred's eyes sparkled, and cousin Horace took a warmer place in her affections than he had held before. It was well, for it needed all that to keep her from disliking him for his indifference toward his motherless little one, when, a few days later, she heard his story from her mother's lips.
They had a very busy fall and winter, missing sorely Miss Stanhope's loved companionship and her help in the family sewing, the putting up of fruit—the pickling and preserving, indeed in every department of household work; and in nothing more than in the care of the sick.
Letters came from her at rare intervals—for mails were infrequent in those days and postage was very high—were read and re-read, then put carefully by to be enjoyed again when time and opportunity could be found for another perusal. They were not the brief statements of facts that letters of the present day generally are, but long chatty epistles, giving in pleasing detail, her own doings and those of old friends and acquaintances, and all that had happened in Lansdale since they left; telling of her pets, of the books she read and what she thought of them.
Then there were kind inquiries, conjectures as to what they were doing and thinking; answers to their questions, and words of counsel and of tender sympathy in their joys and sorrows.
Many a laugh did they give their readers, and many a tear was dropped upon their pages. They so loved the dear old lady and could almost hear the sweet tones of her voice as they read or repeated to each other, her quaint sayings.
Fall and winter passed, bringing with them no marked changes in the family, but very much the same round of work, study