"Mrs. Winans, are you mad?"
"Not at all; are you? I am quite as strong, quite as able to help those poor sufferers, as your mother is; and yet you do not think she is mad," she answers, half offended.
"No; for she has had the fever, and so have I. You have heard of the fever that desolated Norfolk and Portsmouth in 1855? Mother and I both had the yellow fever in its worst form then, so you see it is perfectly safe and our bounden duty for us to go to the relief of those poor sufferers. But you are frail and delicate yourself. You have never had the fever; you are not acclimated there, and would only fall a victim. It would be a sort of disguised suicide, for you would be voluntarily rushing into the jaws of death."
"No, no," she answered, half bitterly. "I bear a charmed life. Nothing seems to check the current of my doomed existence. And you forget that Memphis is my native home. I lived there the first sixteen years of my life, and am quite accustomed to the peculiar climate. And what if death should come? It would only be to 'leave all disappointment, care, and sorrow, and be at rest forever,' But no, I shall not die. I have borne illness, suffering, sorrow—everything that breaks the heart, and snaps the frail threads of existence—yet here I am still, quite healthy, passably rosy, and willing to devote my strength to those who need it. I have been 'through the fire,' Captain Clendenon, and really," with a subdued smile, "I think I am fireproof."
"Some are refined in the furnace of affliction," he repeats, very gently.
Soothed by the softly spoken words, she asks, timidly:
"Tell me if I may go under your care?"
"If you will go, I shall be most happy to take all the annoyances of travel off your hands; but, little friend, think better of it, and give up this mad, quixotic scheme."
"Do you think it such a mad scheme?" she asks, mortified and humiliated. "Do you think I could do no good to those poor suffering victims who need gentle womanly tending so badly? Do you think the sacrifice of my ease, and luxury, and comfort, would count as nothing with Christ? If you think this, Captain Clendenon, tell me so frankly, and I will remain in Norfolk—not otherwise."
There is nothing for him to urge against this appeal. She touches up the ponies with her slim, little whip, lightly and impatiently. They are off, like the wind, for home again, as he makes the last appeal he can think of to this indomitable young spirit.