in he took her up; and thus by easy stages we got her
into "her coach." I pulled, and he pushed it, "to give me a start." How
easy and light and strong it was! How delighted were both she and I!

Fanny was too easily alarmed to enjoy driving much, even when she was
well; and she had not walked out for weeks. During that time, the slow,
late spring had turned into midsummer; and the mere change from a
sick-room to the fresh, outer world is always so very great! For me, it
was the first going abroad since my return to Beverly. We went in the
sun till my charge's little snowdrop hands were warm, and then drew up
under the shade of an elm, on a little airy knoll that commanded a
distant view of the sea, and was fanned by a soft air, which helped poor
Fanny's breathing. She now insisted on my resting myself; and I turned
the springs back and arranged the cushions so that she could lie down,
took a new handkerchief of my guardian's from my pocket, and hemmed it,
as I sat at her side on a stone, while she mused and dozed. When she
awoke, I gave her her luncheon from a convenient little box in the
chair, and drew her home by dinner-time.

In this way we spent much of the month of July--shall I say
it?--agreeably. Nobody will believe it, who has not felt or seen the
marvellous relief afforded by an entire change of scene and occupation
to a person tried as I had been. If I had but "one idea," that idea was
now Fanny. Instinctively in part, and partly of set purpose, I postponed
to her every other consideration and thought. It was delightful to me to
be able, in my turn, to take her to one after another of the dear old
haunts, in wood or on beach, where she had often led me, when a child,
to play. I always did love to have something to take care of; and the
care of Fanny wore upon me little. She was the most considerate of
invalids.

Besides, she was better, or at any rate I thought so, after she began to
go out in Miss Dudley's chair. Her appetite improved; her nerves grew
more firm; and her cough was sometimes so quiet at night that her
laudanum would stand on her little table in the morning, just as it was
dropped for her the evening before.

Not only were my spirits amended by the fresh air in which, by Dr.
Physick's strict orders, I lived with her through the twenty-four hours,
but my health too. He had declared her illness to be "probably owing in
great part to the foul atmosphere in which," he found, "she slept"; and
n