“'Darling mamma! my poor, sweet little mother!' in her reed-like chirp; 'can I do nothing to make you feel better?' putting her hands upon my head and stroking my face until my flesh crawled.
“'Yes,' said I, out of all patience. 'Take yourself off, and don't let me see you again until to-morrow morning! You kill me with your teasing.'
“And would you believe it? she just put up her sewing in the basket and went directly out, without a tear or a murmur, and when her father came home he could not prevail upon her, by commands or persuasions, to accompany him further than the door of my chamber. So he, who won't admit that she can do anything wrong, instead of whipping her for her obstinacy, as he ought to have done, guessed she 'had some reason' for her disobedience which she did not like to tell, and interrogated poor, persecuted me. When he had heard my version of the manner in which we had spent the afternoon, he only said, 'I should have foreseen this. But the child—she is only a child, Rosa!—did her best!' and he looked so mournful that I, knowing he blamed me for his bantling's freak of temper, told him plainly that he cared a thousand times more for this diminutive bundle of hypocrisy than he ever did for me, and that his absurd favoritism was fast begetting in me a positive dislike for her. I couldn't endure the sight of the sulky little mischief-maker for a week after her complaint of barbarity had brought the look into his face I knew so well.”
“O Rosa, she is your own flesh and blood! and, as her father said, a mere baby yet! You said, too, that she refused to assign any cause to him for her singular conduct.”
“She might better have made open outcry than have left upon his mind the impression that I had banished her cruelly and unnecessarily. But I despair of giving you an idea of how provoking she can be. She is a Chilton, through and through, in feature, manner, and disposition—one of those 'goody' children, you know! a class of animals that are simply intolerable to me. She is too precocious and unbaby-like to be in the least interesting. You should have seen my little Violet to understand what a constant disappointment Florence is. She was myself in miniature, and moreover the most witching, prankish, peppery elf that was ever made. The best trait in Florence's character was her love for her baby-sister. She gave up everything to her while she was alive, and they told me that she would not eat, and scarcely slept, for days after her death. Her father will have it that she is singularly sensitive, and has marvellous depths of feeling; but if this be so, it is queer I never found it out. Nobody could help adoring Violet—my sweet, lost, beautiful angel!”
The hysterical sobs were pumping up the tears now in hot torrents, and these Mrs. Sutton was fain to assuage by loving arts she would not—but for the danger of allowing them to flow—have been in the temper to employ, so full was her heart of yearning pity for the hardly-used babe, and displeasure at the mother's weak selfishness. It was easier to forgive and forget Rosa's sins; to lessen, in the retrospect, her worst faults into foibles, than it would have been to overlook the more venal failings of one less mercurial, and whose personal fascinations did not equal hers.
Ere the close of another day, Mrs. Sutton had excused her unnatural insensibility to her child's virtues and affection, by representing to herself how fearfully disease had warped judgment and perception; had cast over the enormities she could not palliate the pall of solemn remembrance of the truth that death's dark door was already as surely shut between mother and daughter, as if the grave held the former. A week of chill March rains and wind was disastrous to the patient, who had seemed to draw her main supplies of strength from the sunshine admitted freely to her room, with the spring air, redolent with the delicious odors of the freshly-turned earth, the budding trees, and early blossoms from the garden beneath her windows. She shrank and shivered under the ungenial sky, while the drizzling mist soaked life and animation out of the fragile body. Occasional fits of delirium, increased difficulty of breathing, and a steady decline of the slender remains of vital force, warned her attendants that their care would not be required much longer. She was still obstinate in her disbelief of the grave nature of her malady. The most distant reference to her decease would arouse her to angry refutation of the hinted doubt of her recovery, and excited her to offer proof of her declaration that she was less ill than others supposed; she would summon up a poor counterfeit of energy and mirth, more ghastly than her previous lassitude; deny that she suffered from any cause, save the unfailing nervous depression consequent upon the unfavorable weather.
Then came a day on which the sun looked forth with augmented splendor from his sombrely curtained pavilion; when the naked branches of the deciduous trees, the serried lances of the evergreens, and the broad leaves of the tent-like magnolias—the pride of the Tazewell place—shone as from a bath of molten silver. The battered flowers ventured into later and healthier bloom, and a robin, swinging upon the lilac spray nearest Rosa's window, sang blithe greeting to the reinstated spring.
Rosa heard him—opened her eyes, and smiled.
“One—maybe the very same—used to sing there every morning when I was a girl—used to awake me from my second nap. I could sleep all night then, and never dream once!”