ery disagreeable incident of
sickness,--with such a perfect sense of time, such a clear, untroubled
head, such exact accuracy in remembering every prescription and
direction of the doctors,--she was everything to him. They who had
shrugged their shoulders at her little peculiarities and setnesses, so
unlike the careless freedom of southern manners, acknowledged that now
she was the exact person that was wanted.

Uncle Tom was much in Eva's room. The child suffered much from nervous
restlessness, and it was a relief to her to be carried; and it was Tom's
greatest delight to carry her little frail form in his arms, resting on
a pillow, now up and down her room, now out into the verandah; and when
the fresh sea-breezes blew from the lake,--and the child felt freshest
in the morning,--he would sometimes walk with her under the orange-trees
in the garden, or, sitting down in some of their old seats, sing to her
their favorite old hymns.

Her father often did the same thing; but his frame was slighter, and
when he was weary, Eva would say to him,

"O, papa, let Tom take me. Poor fellow! it pleases him; and you know
it's all he can do now, and he wants to do something!"

"So do I, Eva!" said her father.

"Well, papa, you can do everything, and are everything to me. You read
to me,--you sit up nights,--and Tom has only this one thing, and his
singing; and I know, too, he does it easier than you can. He carries me
so strong!"

The desire to do something was not confined to Tom. Every servant in the
establishment showed the same feeling, and in their way did what they
could.

Poor Mammy's heart yearned towards her darling; but she found no
opportunity, night or day, as Marie declared that the state of her mind
was such, it was impossible for her to rest; and, of course, it was
against her principles to let any one else rest. Twenty times in a
night, Mammy would be roused to rub her feet, to bathe her head, to find
her pocket-handkerchief, to see what the noise was in Eva's room, to let
down a curtain because it was too light, or to put it up because it was
too dark; and, in the daytime, when she longed to have some share in the
nursing of her pet, Marie seemed unusually ingenious in keeping her busy
anywhere and everywhere all over the house, or about her own person; so
that stolen interviews and momentary glimpses were all she could obtain.

"I feel it my duty to be particularly careful of myself, now," she would
say,