“Well,” Mrs. Sherman burst out, “there! She’s broke my heart. Nellie, it’s time for your medicine. She ain’t got no appetite, Miss Wharton. I don’t know what I _shall_ do!” The woman’s worn face quivered with tears. Nellie got up and took her medicine; she glanced at the hem of Miss Wharton’s skirt, but would not lift her eyes any higher. The clothes on the stove boiled, and the suds splashed over and sizzled on the hot iron. Mrs. Sherman, talking and crying, rammed them down with the clothes-stick.
“I couldn’t believe it at first. She’d kep’ straight for more ’an a year an’ a half. But she got to goin’ with a lot o’ them fast girls, and she spent every cent she had on her back”--
Sara looked around suddenly. “Did she give you a present of a chair at Christmas?”
“A chair? No; she never gave me nothing. Not a thing. You told her she’d got to pay me board. I’d ’a’ been satisfied with that, and not ’a’ wanted no presents of chairs. Well, I took her out of her dyin’ mother’s arms, and I’ve lived to see the day I wished she’d a-died then, with my poor, blessed sister. _She_ made a misstep, I will say; and the man made off and left her. But she was expectin’ to marry him. It was different from this one. _I’ve_ been a respectable woman all my life, and I can’t stand the shame of this,--the neighbors’ll know,” she rambled on, crying and jabbing at the steaming clothes, and looking with furtive, dumb love at the little, sick, mean face on the other side of the stove.
As for Sara Wharton, she went home heart-sick, but gathering up her courage and her faith for further effort; this time to save the body as well as the soul.
The first thing to be done was, plainly, to see the doctor at the dispensary, who had already examined Nellie.
“I’ll have to tell him the truth about her,” Sara thought, frowning. But it never occurred to her to shirk this.
“Yes, I remember the case, I think,” said Dr. Morse; “incipient phthisis, I believe. Just let me look it up; yes, that was it; anæmia, also; I gave her a tonic.”
“Phthisis?” Sara repeated, her color paling. “Oh, Dr. Morse, doesn’t that mean--consumption?”
“Not yet,” he answered, with all the cheerfulness of scientific indifference. “It will doubtless develop into consumption.”