such problems. The care of
Evelina filled Ann Eliza's days and nights. The hastily summoned doctor
had pronounced her to be suffering from pneumonia, and under his care
the first stress of the disease was relieved. But her recovery was only
partial, and long after the doctor's visits had ceased she continued to
lie in bed, too weak to move, and seemingly indifferent to everything
about her.

At length one evening, about six weeks after her return, she said to her
sister: "I don't feel's if I'd ever get up again."

Ann Eliza turned from the kettle she was placing on the stove. She was
startled by the echo the words woke in her own breast.

"Don't you talk like that, Evelina! I guess you're on'y tired out--and
disheartened."

"Yes, I'm disheartened," Evelina murmured.

A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession with a word
of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.

"Maybe you'll brighten up when your cough gets better," she suggested.

"Yes--or my cough'll get better when I brighten up," Evelina retorted
with a touch of her old tartness.

"Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?"

"I don't see's there's much difference."

"Well, I guess I'll get the doctor to come round again," Ann Eliza said,
trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending
for the plumber or the gas-fitter.

"It ain't any use sending for the doctor--and who's going to pay him?"

"I am," answered the elder sister. "Here's your tea, and a mite of
toast. Don't that tempt you?"

Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been tormented by
that same question--who was to pay the doctor?--and a few days before
she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty dollars of Miss
Mellins. The transaction had cost her one of the bitterest struggles
of her life. She had never borrowed a penny of any one before, and the
possibility of having to do so had always been classed in her mind
among those shameful extremities to which Providence does not let
decent people come. But nowadays she no longer believed in the personal
supervision of Providence; and had she been compelled to steal the money
instead of borrowing it, she would have felt that her conscience was the
only tribunal before which she had to answer. Nevertheless, the actual
humiliation of having to ask for the money was no less bitter; and she
could hardly hope that Miss Mellins would view the case with the
same detach