It was pneumonia. For 5 days jean's temperature ranged between 103 & 104 2/5, till this morning, when it got down to 101. She looks like an escaped survivor of a forest fire. For 6 days now my story in the Christmas Harper's "Was it Heaven? or Hell?"—has been enacted in this household. Every day Clara & the nurses have lied about Jean to her mother, describing the fine times she is having outdoors in the winter sports.

That proved a hard, trying winter in the Clemens home, and the burden of it fell chiefly, indeed almost entirely, upon Clara Clemens. Mrs. Clemens became still more frail, and no other member of the family, not even her husband, was allowed to see her for longer than the briefest interval. Yet the patient was all the more anxious to know the news, and daily it had to be prepared—chiefly invented—for her comfort. In an account which Clemens once set down of the "Siege and Season of Unveracity," as he called it, he said:

Clara stood a daily watch of three or four hours, and hers was a hard office indeed. Daily she sealed up in her heart a dozen dangerous truths, and thus saved her mother's life and hope and happiness with holy lies. She had never told her mother a lie in her life before, and I may almost say that she never told her a truth afterward. It was fortunate for us all that Clara's reputation for truthfulness was so well established in her mother's mind. It was our daily protection from disaster. The mother never doubted Clara's word. Clara could tell her large improbabilities without exciting any suspicion, whereas if I tried to market even a small and simple one the case would have been different. I was never able to get a reputation like Clara's. Mrs. Clemens questioned Clara every day concerning Jean's health, spirits, clothes, employments, and amusements, and how she was enjoying herself; and Clara furnished the information right along in minute detail—every word of it false, of course. Every day she had to tell how Jean dressed, and in time she got so tired of using Jean's existing clothes over and over again, and trying to get new effects out of them, that finally, as a relief to her hard-worked invention, she got to adding imaginary clothes to Jean's wardrobe, and probably would have doubled it and trebled it if a warning note in her mother's comments had not admonished her that she was spending more money on these spectral gowns and things than the family income justified.

Some portions of detailed accounts of Clara's busy days of this period, as written at the time by Clemens to Twichell and to Mrs. Crane, are eminently worth preserving. To Mrs. Crane:

Clara does not go to her Monday lesson in New York today [her mother having seemed not so well through the night], but forgets that fact and enters her mother's room (where she has no business to be) toward train-time dressed in a wrapper.

LIVY. Why, Clara, aren't you going to your lesson?
CLARA (almost caught). Yes.
L. In that costume?
CL. Oh no.
L. Well, you can't make your train; it's impossible.
CL. I know, but I'm going to take the other one.
L. Indeed that won't do—you'll be ever so much too late for
your lesson.
CL. No, the lesson-time has been put an hour later.
L. (satisfied, then suddenly). But, Clara, that train and the late
lesson together will make you late to Mrs. Hapgood's luncheon.
CL. No, the train leaves fifteen minutes earlier than it used to.
L. (satisfied). Tell Mrs. Hapgood, etc., etc., etc. (which Clara
promises to do). Clara, dear, after the luncheon—I hate to put
this on you—but could you do two or three little shopping-errands
for me?
CL. Oh, it won't trouble me a bit-I can do it. (Takes a list of
the things she is to buy-a list which she will presently hand to
another.)

At 3 or 4 P.M. Clara takes the things brought from New York,
studies over her part a little, then goes to her mother's room.

LIVY. It's very good of you, dear. Of course, if I had known it
was going to be so snowy and drizzly and sloppy I wouldn't have
asked you to buy them. Did you get wet?
CL. Oh, nothing to hurt.
L. You took a cab both ways?
CL. Not from the station to the lesson-the weather was good enough
till that was over.
L. Well, now, tell me everything Mrs. Hapgood said.

Clara tells her a long yarn-avoiding novelties and surprises and anything likely to inspire questions difficult to answer; and of course detailing the menu, for if it had been the feeding of the 5,000 Livy would have insisted on knowing what kind of bread it was and how the fishes were served. By and by, while talking of something else:

LIVY. Clams!—in the end of December. Are you sure it was clams?
CL. I didn't say cl—-I meant Blue Points.
L. (tranquilized). It seemed odd. What is Jean doing?
CL. She said she was going to do a little typewriting.
L. Has she been out to-day?
CL. Only a moment, right after luncheon. She was determined to go
out again, but——
L. How did you know she was out?
CL. (saving herself in time). Katie told me. She was determined
to go out again in the rain and snow, but I persuaded her to stay
in.
L. (with moving and grateful admiration). Clara, you are
wonderful! the wise watch you keep over Jean, and the influence you
have over her; it's so lovely of you, and I tied here and can't take
care of her myself. (And she goes on with these undeserved praises
till Clara is expiring with shame.)