Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Spring had come round. The sofa belonging to Mrs. Reece's parlour was in Mrs. Halliburton's, and Janey was lying on it—her blue eyes bright, her cheeks hectic, her fair curls falling in disorder. Through autumn, through winter, it had appeared that Dobbs's prognostications of evil for Jane were not to be borne out, for she had recovered from the temporary indications of illness, and had continued well; but, with the early spring weather, Jane failed, and failed rapidly. The cough came back, and great weakness grew upon her. She was always wanting to be at rest, and would lie about anywhere. Spreading a cloak on the floor, with a pillow for her head, Janey would plant herself between her mother and the fire, pulling the cloak up on the side near the door. One day Dobbs came in and saw her there.

"My heart alive!" uttered Dobbs, when she had recovered her surprise; "what are you lying down there for?"

"I am tired," replied Janey; "and there's nowhere else to lie. If I put three chairs together, it is not comfortable, and the pillow rolls off."

"There's the sofa in our room," said Dobbs. "Why don't you lie on that?"

"So I do, you know, Dobbs; but I want to talk to mamma sometimes."

Dobbs disappeared. Presently there was a floundering and thumping heard in the passage, and the sofa was propelled in by Dobbs, very red with the exertion. "My missis is indignant to think that the child should be upon the floor," cried she, wrathfully. "One would suppose some folks were born without brains, or the sofa might have been asked for."

"But, Dobbs," said Janey—and she was allowed to "Dobbs" as much as she pleased, unreproved—"what am I to lie on in your room?"

"Isn't there my easy chair, with the high foot-board in front—as good as a bed when you let it out?" returned Dobbs, proceeding to place Janey comfortably on the sofa. "And now let me say what I came in to say, when the sight of that child on the cold floor sent me shocked out again," she added, turning to Jane. "My missis's leg is no better to-day, and she has made up her mind to have Parry. It's erysipelas, as sure as a gun. Every other spring, about, she's laid up with it in her legs, one or the other of 'em. Ten weeks I have known her in bed with it——"

"The very best preventive to erysipelas is to take an occasional warm bath," interrupted Jane.

The suggestion gave immense offence to Dobbs. "A warm bath!" she uttered, ironically. "And how, pray, should my missis take a warm bath? Sit down in a mashing-tub, and have a furnace of boiling water turned on to her? Those new-fangled notions may do for Londoners, but they are not known at Helstonleigh. Warm baths!" repeated Dobbs, with increased scorn: "hadn't you better propose a water-bed at once? I have heard that they are inventing them also."