"What do you mean, Agnes?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, glancing anxiously at her daughter.
"I am going down to Shreveport, to help to nurse those poor perishing people."
"Agnes!"
"Yes, dear mother. I believe it to be my duty to go and do what little I can toward alleviating the distress of those stricken sufferers."
"Why, Agnes, dear, you would surely perish yourself."
"O no, mother, you forget how I waited on papa and you when you both had the fever down in New Orleans."
This was true. Several years before, while the Arnolds had been making a pleasure tour in the Southern States, they had been seized with the disorder, and but for the unflagging, heroic devotion of Agnes, they would most likely have perished.
"No, darling, I could never forget that were I to live a hundred years. It is because I do remember the horror of that time that I would not wish you to expose yourself to such another. Besides, what would I do without you?"
"That is the only subject that gives me any pain, mother; but then God would take care of you as well as of me, would he not?"
"Yes."