"No!" said Emily. "My head aches, and I have such pains in my limbs that I can hardly help screaming. I think I must have taken cold last night."
"I don't feel any the worse," said Delia, "but then I kept in motion, and you were sitting most of the time on that cold stone bench. How selfish I was! You ought to hate me, Emily, for I have done you nothing but harm ever since I knew you. I almost wish you did."
"I don't!" replied Emily. "I love you dearly, and as to going out, it was as much my fault as yours. I proposed it in the first place, when we were walking in the afternoon."
"It was all arranged long before that," said Delia, "and I should have gone at any rate. But come, there is the bell. Miss Thomas will be quite satisfied with our state of minds I think," she added, looking in the glass. "You know she always measures the girls penitence by the redness of their eyes and noses."
Emily could not laugh, as she usually did, at Delia's jests.
Delia noticed her gravity, and, said, "We may as well laugh as cry, you know, as long as we cannot help ourselves."
"I don't know that," replied Emily, "I know I don't feel very much like laughing. Oh, that pain again! It seems as though it would take my life away."
"Perhaps you will feel better after dinner." remarked Delia. "Do try to keep up, if you can. I believe I should go mad, if you should be taken seriously ill."
Emily did try, and managed to sit up till the middle of the afternoon, when she was overcome by pains and giddiness, and obliged to lie down. She made a heroic endeavor to rise when the tea bell rang, but the effort brought on such excruciating pain, that it was with much difficulty she repressed a scream.
Delia perceived that something serious was the matter, and that Emily ought to receive immediate attention. She called Mrs. Pomeroy, and Mrs. Pomeroy called the doctor, who pronounced that Miss Arlington was laboring under a severe attack of rheumatic fever.