"Oh, how I despise myself! to think that I am lying here while you are waiting on me."
"Well, dear Lucy, get up now, for you will be better doing something, and I cannot help pitying you here alone."
"Then tell me something I can do for you. Oh, I will do anything, but I cannot get up to sit as I did last night."
"This is Saturday," replied Mabel, "and there are many things you can do for me, which will enable me to be entirely with my poor Amy. Shall I leave them to you?"
"Oh, yes," cried Lucy, jumping up, and throwing her arms round her; "you are an angel—I cannot forgive myself—yet you forgive me before I ask you."
Mabel kissed her silently, and gliding from the room, was soon again by her sister's bed.
Amy was feverish, and perpetually wanted something to drink, but it was touching to see how gently she asked for it, and how earnestly she seemed to try to repress her own fretfulness, with her large blue eyes fixed on her sister's face, as if trying to read her approval of every checked complaint.
"It was very naughty of me," she whispered, "to get into the swing, Mabel dear, when you told me not in the morning. Will you forgive me?"
"You are in pain, love," said Mabel, tremulously; "and I cannot call you naughty now."
"Then I am glad you have taught me not to want to be told—but I shall not be happy till you just say you forgive me."