"Poor child! how does she bear it?" asked her uncle.
"She doesn't know how to bear it at all," said Mrs. Conly; "she nearly cries her eyes out."
"No wonder," remarked the grandfather; "it's a terrible prospect she has before her, to say nothing of the present suffering. And her mother has no patience with her; pities herself instead of the child."
"No," said Mrs. Conly, "Enna was never known to have much patience with anybody or anything."
"But Dick's good to her," remarked Isadore.
"Yes," said Arthur, "it's really beautiful to see his devotion to her and how she clings to him. And it's doing the lad good;—making a man of him."
"Surely Enna must feel for her child!" Elsie said, thinking of her own darlings and how her very heart would be torn with anguish at the sight of one of them in so distressing a condition.
"Yes, of course, she cried bitterly over her when first the truth dawned upon her that Molly was really so dreadfully injured; but of course that couldn't last and she soon took to bewailing her own hard fate in having such a burden on her hands, a daughter who must always live single and could never be anything but a helpless invalid."
Elsie understood how it was; for had she not known Enna from a child? Her heart ached for Molly, and as she told her own little ones of their poor cousin's hopeless, helpless state, she mingled her tears with theirs.
"Mamma, won't you 'vite her to come here?" pleaded Harold.