"Ben, your native air is deleterious."
"You laugh. I feel what you say. I do not attempt to play the missionary at home, for my field is not here."
"You were wise not to bring Veronica, I see already."
"She would see what I hate myself for."
"One may venture farther with a friend than a lover."
"I thought that you might understand the results of my associations.
Curse them all! Come, girls, we must go back."
CHAPTER XXX.
I took a cold that night. Belem was damp always, but its midnight damp was worse than any other. Mrs. Somers sent me medicine. Adelaide asked me, with an air of contemplation, what made me sick, and felt her own pulse. Ann criticised my nightgown ruffles, and accused me of wearing imitation lace; but nursing was her forte, and she stayed by me, annoying me by a frequent beating up of my pillow, and the bringing in of bowls of strange mixtures for me to swallow, which she persuaded the cook to make and her father to taste.
Before I left my room, Mrs. Somers came to see me.
"You are about well, I hear," she said, in a cold voice.