company chance throws in my way."
Mr. Sackville took Edward by the hand, and turned away, grieved and
disgusted. His eye fell on his daughter, who was sitting beside
Mrs. Barton, carefully sheltering the sick child from the sun with her
parasol, while she nicely prepared an orange and offered it to her.
The little sufferer seized it eagerly and devoured it, and then fixed
her eyes on Julia and smiled. The first smile of a sick child is
electrifying.
"Oh! miss," said the mother, "does not she seem to say, 'God bless you,'
though she cannot speak it?"
Julia was delighted with the revival of the child, and with the mother's
gratitude, which was even more manifest in her brightened countenance
than in her words.
"My medicine," said Julia, "has worked wonders; if I could but find one
more orange, I should quite cure my little patient;" and she zealously
ransacked the carriage, and turned out every basket and bag in the hope
of finding another, but all in vain. Disappointed, she turned to her
mother,--"Cannot we, mama," she said, "do something more for this poor
woman before we leave her?"
"I do not see that we can, my dear," replied Mrs. Sackville, "I have
offered to pay her stage fare hence to Newark, but she says she has
money, and declines receiving any thing."
"Oh, then she is not obliged to go on foot--I could not endure to think
of the child's being exposed to this hot sun."
"That, I am afraid, cannot be helped; for the mother does go to Newark
on foot. I could not persuade her to ride. She insists that she is very
strong, and that her child is so wasted she scarcely feels the burthen
of it; and besides, she travels but a very short distance in a day."
Julia paused for a moment. She was very reluctant to give up the point,
and finally, as the last resource of her ingenuity, she proposed that
her mother should take the woman into the carriage. "We can just squeeze
her in for a few miles, mama; she looks so perfectly nice, that even
uncle can't object; and I want so to know if the little girl continues
to get better."
Mrs. Sackville could scarcely refrain from smiling at Julia's odd
proposition to take in a way-faring woman and two children, but it had
its source in such kind feelings, that she would not ridicule it. "I am
afraid, my dear Julia," she said, "that it is quite impossible to
gratify you. You know your uncle already complains of wanting
elbow-room."
"Well then, mother, just listen to on
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