Some doctors are coming from New York to-night to see him. Morewood only shakes his head when asked, as much as saying, I know, but he will not believe me.
May 12.—Mrs. Shandy came down to Satira last evening crying, and blurted out that Philip has a twist or something in his backbone,—Pott's disease they call it. He will be a hunchback. "An' when he looks at me so lovin' with those big gray eyes of his, it seems that I can't bear it," she sobbed right on Satira's shoulder.
"What did his father say?" asked she.
"Mr. Angus? Well he was hard struck and stayed above stairs all yesterday. But this morning he came down and says to us help standing by, 'Do all the doctors say, but never mention to my son or to me that he is different from other boys. Who breaks my order—goes.' Ah! Mrs. Pegrim, but he's got an awful pride and will; I have my doubts if God himself could break it."
1867, May. Poppea is past six now and the Misses Felton think she should have lessons. She knows her letters from her blocks, and Hughey Oldys reads fairy books to her, but it's the hill-country speech that worries me, and also the Felton ladies. When I talk, I talk like those I live among, but when I put pen to paper, I do better, and write more like those I've met in reading.
Miss Emmy wants to learn her every day so when she's eight she can go to the Academy, and being a lady baby as she was, not shame her breeding. For manners, she's catching them already, and Stephen Latimer says she has a great ear for music, and can sing anything she hears Hugh sing in Sunday-school; not out loud, of course, but soft and strange, like a young bird that's trying.