This state of things lasted for some weeks.
After a night of suffering to the child and sleeplessness to herself, Fannie would rise in the morning, and, though nearly blind, giddy and fainting from habitual loss of rest, she would set her room in order, eat a morsel of breakfast, bathe and dress the little one, collect all the articles it would need, and prepare its food and medicine for the day; and, lastly, dress herself with neatness and taste, for it was very necessary that the shop girl should look as well as possible; take her sick babe in one arm, and its basket of necessaries in the other, lock her door, and set out for the shop, stopping on her way to leave the child and its basket at Aunt Peggy's hut, where there was no cradle or rocking-chair, but, what was perhaps as well, a pallet laid in the coolest part of the room.
Here Fannie would sit and rest a moment, while she nursed her child, and then she would lay it down upon the pallet and leave it, thankful if the little creature happened to be sleeping peacefully, wretched if it chanced to be wakeful and to be wailing after its mother.
One morning, when Fannie had lingered beyond her hour for going to the store, trying to put to sleep or to pacify the suffering child, she finally laid it down upon the pallet, and, with many kisses and soothing words and promises to come back soon, tore herself away; but, just as she reached the door the little one struggled upon its feeble limbs, staggered toward her, and fell, with its weak hand clasping her skirts.
Fannie burst into tears, took the babe up in her arms, sat down upon a chair, and, pressing the little sufferer to her bosom, caressed and soothed it, and promised never to leave it again; and, speaking to the old woman, said:
"Please go over to Leroux's, Aunt Peggy, and tell monsieur that I can't come to-day on account of poor little Coralie; and I don't know when I can come—so he may, if he chooses, look out for somebody else to fill my place."
The prudent old woman expostulated, asked Fannie what she would do for a living if she gave up her situation at Leroux's, and advised her to hold fast, saying that the child might die, and then, there! she couldn't get the place again so easy as she had lost it.
But Fannie was firm. Pressing the infant closer to her bosom, she replied: Yes; that little Coralie might die, and then the thought of how often she had left the poor baby grieving for her mother would break her heart; that it was no use for any one to talk; come what might, she never would leave the sick child again.
Aunt Peggy carried the message, and brought back the reply that Madam Leroux had always expected this trouble to come upon Fannie; that she had always said so; and that Fannie would find her words true, that this was only the beginning of the troubles she would meet, for having been so lost to her own interest as to marry a handsome slave man, whose very hands were not his own, to help her.
Fannie said that she would trust in God, unto death and beyond death; for that often she thought the best way in which He could right His children's wrongs, and comfort their afflictions, was by taking them from this sad world to His own heaven.