A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession with a word of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.
“Maybe you'll brighten up when your cough gets better,” she suggested.
“Yes—or my cough'll get better when I brighten up,” Evelina retorted with a touch of her old tartness.
“Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?”
“I don't see's there's much difference.”
“Well, I guess I'll get the doctor to come round again,” Ann Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending for the plumber or the gas-fitter.
“It ain't any use sending for the doctor—and who's going to pay him?”
“I am,” answered the elder sister. “Here's your tea, and a mite of toast. Don't that tempt you?”
Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been tormented by that same question—who was to pay the doctor?—and a few days before she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty dollars of Miss Mellins. The transaction had cost her one of the bitterest struggles of her life. She had never borrowed a penny of any one before, and the possibility of having to do so had always been classed in her mind among those shameful extremities to which Providence does not let decent people come. But nowadays she no longer believed in the personal supervision of Providence; and had she been compelled to steal the money instead of borrowing it, she would have felt that her conscience was the only tribunal before which she had to answer. Nevertheless, the actual humiliation of having to ask for the money was no less bitter; and she could hardly hope that Miss Mellins would view the case with the same detachment as herself. Miss Mellins was very kind; but she not unnaturally felt that her kindness should be rewarded by according her the right to ask questions; and bit by bit Ann Eliza saw Evelina's miserable secret slipping into the dress-maker's possession.
When the doctor came she left him alone with Evelina, busying herself in the shop that she might have an opportunity of seeing him alone on his way out. To steady herself she began to sort a trayful of buttons, and when the doctor appeared she was reciting under her breath: “Twenty-four horn, two and a half cards fancy pearl...” She saw at once that his look was grave.