e pantry and lift up every tumbler and wine-glass on the
shelf, one after the other, and look under it as if she really expected
to find the missing article there; and to take off the cover of
vegetable dishes to look for her snuff-box, or open the door of the
stove, if her work-bag, or knitting were missing, apparently with the
confident expectation of finding them unharmed amidst the blazing fire.

Cousin Betty had a very uncomfortable fashion of _dying_ too, every
little while, which at first alarmed her friends so much that
restoratives were speedily procured; but as she never failed to come to
life again, they became, after a time, accustomed to the parting scene,
so that there was great danger that when she really did take her
departure, nobody would believe it.

"My dear," said she one night to Effie, "I feel very unwell; very
unwell, indeed; I think it's more'n likely I shan't last the night
through. I wish you wouldn't leave me alone this evening, and then if
I'm suddenly taken worse, you know you can call the family. I should
like to see them all before I go."

Effie promised she would not leave her, and bringing her book, she
seated herself by the stove in cousin Betty's room. In about a hour she
appeared in the parlor, her face purple with the effort to suppress the
inclination to laugh, and said, "Oh, do all of you please to come to
cousin Betty's room a few moments."

"What, is she dying?" they asked.

"Oh, no! but just come; very quietly; there's a sight for you to see."

Cousin Betty always tied a large handkerchief about her head when she
went to bed, and on the night in question, the two ends of the
handkerchief being tied in a knot stood up from her head like two
enormous ears. She was bolstered up by pillows, as she declared she
could not breathe in any other position, and at every breath she drew
she opened and shut her mouth with a sudden jerk. Effie had looked up
from her reading suddenly, and caught the reflection of cousin Betty's
profile, thrown by the light, greatly magnified upon the wall, and
stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth to prevent a sudden explosion of
laughter, by which cousin Betty might be awakened, she ran to call the
family. No pen-sketch but an actual profile would give the slightest
idea of the extraordinary and most ludicrous appearance of the image
thus thrown upon the wall; with the enormous ears standing up, and the
mouth and chin snapping together like the claws