from the centre-table for a cloak, and
played hob with some Bohemian glassware and a few Parisian ornaments,
finishing by skedaddling up-stairs a good deal more rapidly than I came
down. Was not _there_ 'courage' for you?"

"No want of it, certainly," said Crawford, who had been laughing a
little, spite of his low spirits, at the naivete of the relation. "It
was modesty and not want of personal courage that drove you out of that
very funny position."

"Think so?" said the wild girl. "Then as I _am_ a coward and mean to be
known for what I am, I must tell you another story. A few weeks ago I
went into a menagerie, and one of the lions made a rush at the bars of
his cage--probably because he saw _me_. There was about as much danger
of his getting out, I suppose, as there would have been of _my_ doing so
in the same circumstances; but of course I made a fool of myself, got
frightened, yelled, and had all the visitors in the menagerie looking at
me. How was _that_? No want of courage? Eh?"

"That," said Richard Crawford, sententiously, "that was the _woman_."

"Humph!" said Joe, as she once more assisted the invalid to dispose
himself comfortably on his usual couch. "Now you will not agree to my
estimate of _myself_, perhaps you will think better of my estimate of
_you_."

"Perhaps so," said Crawford. "Try me."

"Well, then, I have been watching you half the afternoon, and I have
made up my mind about you more nearly than ever before."

"And what am I?" asked Crawford, with just a dash of impatience in his
tone.

"A hypochondriac!" said Joe. "You are a little sick, and you think
yourself much worse. You look better and feel better within the last
hour--"

"Eh, what?" said the invalid, startled apparently by some sudden thought
connected with the words.

"I say that you look better and feel better, within the last hour, than
you have done for weeks. You are getting better, and you have neither
the honesty to acknowledge it or the grace to thank God for it! Dick
Crawford, if you ever die--and I suppose you will, some time--you will
commit suicide by taking an over-dose of low spirits!"

How flippantly the wild girl spoke!--and yet she was right, and Dick
Crawford felt that she was right. The supplying cause of his malady
removed, such a lecture, from such ready lips, was precisely the thing
that he needed, to break up the habit of despondency--the habit of
_enjoying and nursing suffering_ (that phrase may expre