"Never you mind," said Daffy, again, rubbing her sleeve into her own eyes, "you shall—you shall—
"Lor', I don't know what to say to you—Dolly's a—a—well she's sick and childish," said Daffy, ending her sentence in a very different manner from what she had intended.
"Perhaps it is that," said the good little creature, brightening up, "I did not think of that. How cruel it was for me to think her unkind, when she was only sick; I am glad you said that, Daffy," and Rose wiped her eyes and went back into the sick chamber.
"It's awful to hold in when a body's so rampageous mad," said Daffy, jumping up and oversetting her basket of spools, cotton, needles, pins, etc. "I shouldn't wonder if I burst right out some day, to think of that poor, patient little creature being snubbed so, after being on her tired little legs these six weeks, traveling up and down, here and there, and lying on the floor side of Dolly's bed, night after night, and all after the way she has been treated too (for I have eyes if I don't say nothing), and as long as nobody hears me, I'll just out with it; Dolly has no more heart than that pine table," and Daffy gave it a vindictive thump.
"There—now I feel better—I wish I dared tell her so to her face—but it isn't in me; she makes me shrivel all up, when she puts on one of her horrid looks, and I can't be looking out for a new place with this rheumatism fastening on me every time the wind blows; I don't know what is to become of the poor child, bless her sweet face."
CHAPTER XVII.
It is a long lane that has no turning, and Dolly now began to get about once more.
"Dear me"—she exclaimed one morning, as she crawled round the shop, enveloped in a woolen shawl—"how every thing has gone to rack and ruin since I have been sick; one month more sickness and I should have had to fail. See that yellow ribbon, all faded out, a lying in that window; when I was about, I moved it from the show-case to the window, and from the window to the show-case, according to the sun; three shillings a yard too, bought of Bixby & Co., the last time I went to the city; and there's the dress-caps put into the bonnet-boxes, and the bonnets put into the dress-cap boxes. Whose work is that I'd like to know? And as I live, if there isn't a hole in the cushion of my rocking chair, and the tassel torn off the window shade. O—d-e-a-r—m-e!" and Dolly sank into a chair, and looked pins and needles at the helpless Daffy.