“No,” sez she, kinder pantin’ for breath, “Mamma thinks it hurts any one’s form so to lounge round with cossets off that she never allowed me to take them off when I lay down in the daytime, and Aggie le Fleur wears hers all night, so Mamma said, and she said that she meant to have me wear mine all night when I got a little stronger. Mamma sez that it injures one’s form terribly to go without ’em even for an hour. It ruins anybody to go without ’em, so Mamma said and so Aggie le Fleur sez.”
“Is it possible,” sez I; “I never mistrusted before that I wuz ruined, and I’ve gone without ’em since long enough before you and that young Le Fleur woman you speak of wuz anywhere round or thought on, and,” sez I, “if I wuz in your place I’d run the resk of bein’ spilte, and take that thing offen me.”
She wuz a sweet-dispositioned girl, I could see, and she consented, and she sot up and exerted the hull of her strength, and finally onhinged or onjinted it somewhere and peeled it offen her. And such a sithe of relief she gin, as she sank down on the bed. I felt dretfully to find out by a question or two that the cosset left deep marks. But still I knew cryin’ and sympathy wuzn’t what she needed; no, it wuz cast-iron firmness and common sense. So I took up that instrument of agony some as if it wuz a snake and carried it into the closet under the stairs, and hung it up and locked the door, and sez I in a winnin’ way, “Now, my dear, you let that hang there for a spell and see what will come of it.”
She wuz horrified at the idee, I could see, but bein’ of such a good disposition she crumpled down and bore it.
Well, after Josiah and I eat (that man wouldn’t wait a minute for the President) I got her a good wholesome supper and carried it up into her room on a tray. I had a piece of the breast of a chicken broiled and nice, some delicate toast, and sweet graham bread and butter, and ripe strawberries, and a fragrant cup of coffee not too strong, and plenty of cream. It wuz a good supper. I see she looked disappointed in not havin’ rich cake and sweetmeats, but I talked real cheerful to her about the relations and one thing and another, and, though she said she couldn’t eat a mou’ful, yet she did make out quite a meal. Well, after supper she put on a tea-gown, a pretty, white affair, and some slippers, and come downstairs, and I see, though mebby she didn’t think I did, how different she breathed and how different she looked when she had her iron armor off. She wuz a pretty girl, I see plain—just as pretty as a pink rosy.
Well, that first evenin’ about a quarter to nine she began to look perter and sort of brightened up, and I told her so, and she sez, “Yes, Aunt Samantha, this is the hour that mamma begins to help me dress to go out.”
“To go out!” sez I; “do you mean to the barn?”
“Oh, no,” sez she; “to go to parties.”
“To begin at nine o’clock to dress you to go to parties! Why, for the land sakes, what time do you git home?”