This was indeed a very painful trial for all parties; but Aunt Mary felt that the hand that afflicts can also sustain. She knew, also, that pain and suffering and sorrow are often antidotes to the much more serious evils of pride and vanity and sinful tempers, and that, when they are submitted to patiently, they bring forth excellent fruits.
'Let me nurse dear Mabel myself, aunt,' said Clara; 'I will do everything I can do for her night and day. Oh, I do hope she will soon be well again!'
'And I hope so too, my dear Clara,' replied her aunt; 'but you must not think that you can attend to your cousin without help. You may of course remain with her for company; and this need not perhaps hinder your lessons, unless she should become very impatient, as is often the case with sufferers in this severe malady. But health, your health, my child, must be attended to; you must have air and exercise. And I fear that we shall all be required to lend a helping hand to the poor invalid should the fever greatly increase. I am just going to write to my sister, Mabel's mamma. I must be careful not to alarm her, in her weak state, as she is very nervous. You can return now to your cousin,' continued Aunt Mary, 'and be sure you do not leave her alone until I come to you. Ring for anything that is wanted.'
And now for weeks and weeks, this same selfish, self-willed girl, Mabel Ellis, lay on the bed of pain and languishing, and I may add, I am rejoiced to say, on the bed of sincere repentance. Yes, the salutary lessons of adversity had not been taught in vain, for they were not transitory ones, they had taken deep root; while the Divine precepts and heavenly counsels, which she had heard daily from her most loving and tender nurses, sank deep into a heart out of which had been weeded, to make room for them, the rank and bitter weeds of pride and passion.
Mabel Ellis was indeed an altered character, when able once more to sit up in the arm-chair; though so weak that she could scarcely speak above her breath, her looks of love and thankfulness, and the soft eyes often filled with glad tears, spoke most expressively to the hearts of her aunt and cousin, for they felt that their labour of love had not been in vain; and though all Aunt Mary's usual routine had been put aside, and for a time a new phase of life had been set before her, in this trial she could feel thankful.
'The seeds of affliction and pain,
When the soil has been moistened with rain
That flow'd from a penitent heart,
Into beauty, and fragrance will start.
'Oh flowers of celestial birth!
Though springing from clods of the earth,
How rich are the odours ye shed
O'er the couch where the languishing head
'Is pillow'd in gentle repose,
Forgetting awhile its past woes;
Then waking, the incense of praise,
With your odorous breathings, to raise.'
None but those who are recovering from a serious illness can conceive the feelings of gratitude and love which take possession of the heart when it is rightly disposed, what time the rod of affliction is removed. Mabel seemed to feel herself a new creature, and as she threw her arms round her cousin's neck, she gave expression to feelings of thankfulness and love for the kind attention she had received from her and from her aunt. She did not fail to lament bitterly the pride and sinful temper, which now appeared to her to have been the principal cause of all her trouble.
It was while she was thus bitterly lamenting the past, and weeping on Clara's shoulder, that Aunt Mary came rather suddenly into the room and surprised them.
'Come, my children,' said the kind lady, 'this will never do! Nurse and convalescent both in tears,' she added, for Clara was also weeping; 'I am afraid, dear Mabel, I shall have to dismiss your young attendant, and engage one with more judgment and with less sympathy.'
'Oh no, no, dear aunt,' was the ready response. 'I will behave better, I assure you,' said Clara. 'Poor Mabel is weak, and a little thing makes her cry. She is only sorrowing now for the past; you will teach her, I know, to hope for the future.'