"It's over very soon, mother," said Dahlia.
"The coldness of you young women! Yes; but it's the time—you feeling, trying for air; it's the horrid 'Oh, dear me!' You set your mind on it!"
"I do," said Dahlia. "You see coffin-nails instead of stars. You'd give the world to turn upon one side. You can't think. You can only hate those who put you there. You see them taking tea, saying prayers, sleeping in bed, putting on bonnets, walking to church, kneading dough, eating—all at once, like the firing of a gun. They're in one world; you're in another."
"Why, my goodness, one'd say she'd gone through it herself," ejaculated
Mrs. Sumfit, terrified.
Dahlia sent her eyes at Rhoda.
"I must go and see that poor man covered." Mrs. Sumfit succumbed to a fit of resolution much under the pretence that it had long been forming.
"Well, and mother," said Dahlia, checking her, "promise me. Put a feather on my mouth; put a glass to my face, before you let them carry me out. Will you? Rhoda promises. I have asked her."
"Oh! the ideas of this girl!" Mrs. Sumfit burst out. "And looking so, as she says it. My love, you didn't mean to die?"
Dahlia soothed her, and sent her off.
"I am buried alive!" she said. "I feel it all—the stifling! the hopeless cramp! Let us go and garden. Rhoda, have you got laudanum in the house?"