"I should say that was the matter with your whole body. It's a pretty rickety concern, like my old rocking-chair. Every day I'm looking for it to go to pieces under me," Mrs. Blake remarked.
"I am not nearly so bad as that; I do not expect to fall to pieces for a good many years, now that father has got his sight. He will be able to keep us comfortable, like we used to be years ago."
Mrs. Blake having got her patient back into the chair, administered wine and water to prevent a recurrence of the malady.
A week or two after this Esmerelda informed me one morning that there were great rejoicings in the Mill Road.
"I think they would like to see you there. I heard Mr. Bowen and some of them talking about you last night, after meeting."
"Mr. Bowen—was he there?"
"Oh, yes; and he sees as well as anybody."
"I will go to-day," I said, with difficulty restraining my delight.
"Some of the people who attend Beech Street Church think you are a little above everybody in Cavendish."
Esmerelda spoke with great cordiality. Now that I had been to New York, and the dressmakers there had transformed me, outwardly, into a fashionable woman, I noticed that her respect had considerably increased; and, furthermore, that some of her own costumes had been made in almost exact imitation of mine. No higher compliment than this could Esmerelda have paid me; neither could I help acknowledging that she looked very graceful and lady-like in her Sunday garment, and often I fell to speculating how she would have appeared if half her life had been spent at a first-class boarding-school. A painful sensation, probably akin to jealousy, suggested that probably she would have satisfied my guardian's fastidious tastes better than I could ever do.