“That dear baby is going to be ill, and she ought to be looked after,” said Mrs. Stilton, who immediately ordered a foot-bath and certain herb-teas to be taken by the patient at night.
And with unusual docility Annella obeyed, saying to herself:
“I have need of a cool head, and would drink a pint of bitterest wormwood, and plunge my limbs into boiling water, if I thought that would take away the burning pain in my head that prevents me from thinking clearly.”
And so she took—not her own desperate prescription, but the milder one of Grandmother Stilton. And she arose the next morning, looking like an expiring fire, and professing herself much better.
But on this last day no one took notice of Annella. All the inmates of the house seemed to be possessed of a sort of half-restrained frenzy, in view of the tragedy to be enacted the next morning—that dread tragedy, in which the life of a young girl was to be publicly offered up in expiation of an atrocious crime.
They had all known Eudora, and even those who believed her guilty felt overshadowed and oppressed by the horror of her coming doom, now that it drew so near.
The two ancient dames—they were both so old that a trifling difference of eighteen years between the ages of the mother and daughter was of no sort of account—sat lovingly, side by side, in their easy-chairs, near the drawing-room chimney-corner, where, summer and winter, a little fire was always kept burning for cheerfulness.
“I have lived too long, Abby, my dear—I have lived too long, now that I see little girls as should be innocent as cherubs, and never come to no more harm than soiling their bibs, and getting smacked by their nurse, actually dipping their hands in human blood, and being hanged. Yes, Abby, my dear, I have lived clear away into an age of the world as I wasn’t born and brought up in, and don’t know nothing about. And if the good Lord hasn’t forgot to send for me, I don’t know the reason why I am left. And I think I had better go,” said Mrs. Stilton, despondingly.
“Don’t say that, mother. You are the head of the family, which I don’t know what we would do without you. And I have been used to you all my life. And me and you have always been together ever since I can remember. Think o’ the poor little haberdashery-shop as we kept when we was both left widdies!—and how you comforted me when that boy o’ mine run away and went to sea; which little did we think he would ever rise to be an admiral and make our fortin’, and make ladies of us, and never be ashamed of us ’ither! And since that we have always been so comfortable together! And s’pose now I was to see that chair o’ your’n empty! Oh! whatever should I do! Oh, hoo! hoo! hoo! You’d never go and die and leave me an orphan after all these years at my time of life! Oh, hoo! hoo! hoo!” whimpered the old lady, in the piteous grief of age; for though the younger, she was in mind and body much the feebler of the two.
“There, there, there, now, Abby, my dear, don’t cry. I didn’t mean it. I won’t die! I’ll live to take care of you and your boy! Didn’t I promise your dear father, on his death-bed, as I would bear up for the sake o’ the child?—and haven’t I beared up? Good Lord, yes! how many years! Years of t’iling and striving and struggling for life! And now, in these latter days, when rest and peace have come, is it likely as I will give up and die? No, Abby, my dear, not I! I think as the longer I’ve lived in this world the better I like it, that I do! Only I was upset this morning along of thinking about that poor dear baby. There, then, don’t cry, Abby! I’m sure if you want me to do it, I’d just as lief keep on living all the time as not. I’m sure I don’t see what’s to hinder me. I’m noways ill, thank God, nor yet dissatisfied with this world. There’s many a dark, stormy day as has cleared off just at sunset. And that has been the way of our day of life, Abby, my dear, and now I don’t care if our clear, pleasant twilight lasts forever. I know heaven is a better land; but then I was always humble-minded, and easy satisfied, and so I’m contented with this earth, and don’t long for no better till the Lord pleases. Leastways, Abby, I won’t die till you are ready to go along with me.”