TWO.

In the midst of it all, she went and caught a horrible cold.

Aunt Blin, I mean.

It was all by wearing her india-rubbers a week too long, a week
after she had found the heels were split; and in that week there
came a heavy rain-storm.

She had to stay at home now. Bel went to the rooms and brought back
button-holes for her to make. She could not do much; she was
feverish and languid, and her eyes suffered. But she liked to see
something in the basket; she was always going to be "well enough
to-morrow." When the work had to be returned, Bel hurried, and did
the button-holes of an evening.

Mr. Hewland brought grapes and oranges and flowers to Miss Bree. Bel
fetched home little presents of her own to her aunt, making a pet of
her: ice-cream in a paper cone, horehound candy, once, a tumbler of
black currant jelly. But that last was very dear. If Aunt Blin had
eaten much of other things, they could not have afforded it, for
there were only half earnings now.

To-morrow kept coming, but Miss Bree kept on not getting any better.
"She didn't see the reason," she said; "she never had a cold hang on
so. She believed she'd better go out and shake it off. If she could
have rode down-town she would, but somehow she didn't seem to have
the strength to walk."

The reason she "couldn't have rode," was because all the horses
were sick. It was the singular epidemic of 1872. There were no cars,
no teams; the queer sight was presented in a great city, of the
driveways as clear as the sidewalks; of nobody needed to guard the
crossings or unsnarl the "blocks;" of stillness like Sunday, day
after day; of men harnessed into wagons,--eight human beings
drawing, slowly and heavily, what any poor old prickle-ribs of a
horse, that had life left in him at all, would have trotted
cheerfully off with. A lady's trunk was a cartload; and a lady's
trunk passing through the streets was a curiosity; you could
scarcely get one carried for love or money.

Aunt Blin was a good deal excited; she always was by everything that
befell "her Boston." She would sit by the window in her blanket
shawl, and peer down the Place to see the mail-carts and express
wagons creep slowly by, along Tremont Street, to and from the
railways. She was proud for the men who turned to and did quadruped
work with a will in the emergency, and so took hold of its
sublimity; she was proud of the poor horses, standing in suffering
but royal seclusion in their stable