"Doesn't hurt you? Peace, you know better. You know you never sew a stitch but you lie awake half the night after it with the pain."
Peace did not contradict her. She could not.
"Help your aunt!" Gypsy went on vehemently; "she oughtn't to let you touch it. She hasn't any more feeling than a stone wall, nor half as much, I say!"
"Hush, Gypsy! Don't say that. Indeed I'd rather have the pain, and help her a little, once in a while, when my best days come and I can; I had, really, Gypsy. You don't know how it hurts me—a great deal more than this other hurt in my back—to lie here and let her support me, and I not do a thing. O Gypsy, you don't know!"
Something in Peace Maythorne's tone just then made Gypsy feel worse than she felt to see her sew. She was silent a minute, turning away her face.
"Well, I suppose I don't. But I say I'd as lief have a stone wall for an aunt; no, I will say it, Peace, and you needn't look at me." Peace looked, notwithstanding, and Gypsy stopped saying it.
"Sometimes I've thought," said Peace, after a pause, "I might earn a little crocheting. Once, long ago, I made a mat out of ends of worsted I found, and it didn't hurt me hardly any; on my good days it wouldn't honestly hurt me at all. It's pretty work, crocheting, isn't it?"
"Why don't you crochet, then," said Gypsy, "if you must do anything? It's ten thousand times easier than this sewing you're killing yourself over."
"I've no worsteds, you know," said Peace, coloring; and changed the subject at once.
Gypsy looked thoughtful. Very soon after she bade Peace good-bye, and went home.