Mildred Keith

"We had then, Horace," she said, "we were sure it was some secret grief that made you so unlike your former self. Yes, I will write to Aunt Wealthy. May I tell your story to Mildred also?"

"Not now, please. When I am gone she may hear it."

"Excuse another question. Do you know anything of your little one's looks?"

"I have heard nothing; but if she at all resembles her mother, she must be very pretty."

"And you have never even asked! O Horace!"

"I'm afraid you think me very heartless," he said, coloring. "But you must make some allowance for my being a man. Women, I think, feel more interest in such things than we of the sterner sex do."

"Then I think my husband must be an exceptional man, for he loves his children very dearly, and takes great pride in their beauty and intelligence."

"I daresay; it might have been the same with me under happier circumstances," he answered in a bitter tone.

Little feet came pitpatting through the hall, little voices were asking for mother.

Mr. Dinsmore opened the door and admitted the inseparable three.

"Mother, I'm cold," said Fan shivering, and her teeth chattering as she spoke.

"Cold, darling? Come here."

"She's got a chill," remarked Cyril sagely. "I'm as warm as toast. It's real hot in the sun where we've been playing."

"I'm afraid she has; her nails are quite blue," Mrs. Keith said, taking one small hand in hers. "Come, dear; mother will put you to bed and cover you up nice and warm, and give you something hot to drink."

"Me too, mother," said Don, creeping to her side and laying his head on her shoulder, "I'm so tired and my head aches so bad."

His cheeks were flushed, his hands hot and dry.

"You, too, mother's little man?" she exclaimed. "Mother is so sorry for you both. Have you been cold, Don?"

"Yes, ma'am, and it creeps down my back now."

"Take care of Annis, Cyril," said Mrs. Keith, and excusing herself to her cousin, she led the sick ones away.

Coming back after some little time, "I found Ada down, too," she sighed. "She had crept away by herself, without a word to any one – poor, dear child! 'not wanting to trouble mother,' and there she lay shaking till the very bed shook under her."

"It's dreadful!" cried Mr. Dinsmore, "positively dreadful, Marcia! How can you stand it! I believe there has hardly been a week since I came when you were all well."

"Ah, that's because there are so many of us!" she answered, laughing, though tears sprang to her eyes.

"Why 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."