"It was so good of you, Aunt Mitty, so good of you," replied Sally, caressing her hand.
"If I'd only known sooner, I should have come. You are looking very badly, my child."
"Ben will be well quickly now, and then I can rest."
At this she turned toward me, and enquired in a gentle, reserved way about my illness, the nature of the fever, and the pain from which I had suffered.
"I hope you had the proper food, Ben," she said, calling me for the first time by my name; "I am sorry that I could not supply you with my chicken jelly. Dr. Theophilus tells me he considers it superior to any he has ever tried.—even to Mrs. Clay's."
"Comfort Sally, Miss Mitty, and it will do me more good than chicken jelly."
For a minute she sat looking at me kindly in silence. Then, as little Benjamin was brought, she took him upon her lap, and remarked that he was a beautiful baby, and that she already discerned in him the look of her Uncle Theodoric Fairfax.
"I should like you to come to my house as soon as you are able to move," she said presently, as she rose to go, and paused for a minute to bend over and kiss little Benjamin. "You will be more comfortable there, though the air is, perhaps, fresher over here."
I thanked her with tears in my eyes, and a resolve in my mind that at least Sally and the baby should accept the offer.
"There is a basket of old port in the sitting-room; I thought it might help to strengthen you," were her last words as she passed out, with Sally clinging to her arm, and the crape veil she still wore for Miss Matoaca rustling as she moved.