"Yes, I know your ma's a great reader. Always was. She told me she fairly revelled in stories of high life and detective stories. She said she'd read every one of The Duchess's books—I guess 'twas a hundred. And she said many and many a night she'd set up in bed reading half the night. 'It's so resting,' she says, 'to read 'bout murders and how they are tracked down.' It took up her mind from her sorrers, she says. And she told me she didn't know how she'd ever lived through losing your pa but for Sherlock Holmes. If I was you I'd jest try to stir her up with these books. I'll fetch 'em to her. I read the one of Ouida's and it's real good—and, come to think of it, brimful of eating. Who knows but it'll git her to wanting to eat herself. Why, when I think what kind of cook she was, it don't seem possible! But now don't you worry, Emmy; she'll come all right and she'll come all right 'bout Mrs. Glenn, good friends as they've always been. Why, she always has liked Lida Glenn better than all her other friends together! She'll have to make up. Don't you fret a bit." She said the words in a hearty voice, and she strode vigorously across the grass to the piazza and presented her package with a breezy cheer. "Here's two new books by Ouida, and one by Bertha M. Clay, and two by Maria Corelly, Mrs. Darter; and Emmy'll be ready to read them to you soon."
Mrs. Darter had a delicate pale face, much like Emmy's in features, but etched with tiny wrinkles. The corners of her mouth dropped, and there was a habitual frown of pain on her pretty forehead. She did not look ungentle, only obstinate.
"Thank you," she murmured. Then she sighed.
Mrs. Conner opened her mouth, and shut it again, compressing the lips with unnecessary firmness.
Mrs. Darter laid her head back on her chair. She closed her eyes. A plaintive, sibilant noise hissed through her parted lips.
"Well, I'm real sorry you're sick," said Mrs. Connor, her voice again full of good-nature. "I guess what you need is a little nourishing food—"
Mrs. Darter screamed, and Mrs. Conner stood aghast. She was more aghast to behold all the apparent symptoms of a swoon in the invalid, and would have run for water—an act, however, prevented by the timely opening of Mrs. Darter's eyes. "Don't say the word!" she begged, shuddering. "I have to starve off a pleurisy. It would kill me! And the books are no good; I'm too sick to hear reading. Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!"
Mrs. Conner backed off the piazza—she said she guessed she must go—and left Mrs. Darter moaning and rocking.
"And to tell you the truth, Miss Keith"—thus she ended a breathless narration to her new boarder—"I went quick, for I knew I couldn't hold in one minnit longer! And how'd it help poor Emmy to have her mother quarrel with Lida Glenn and me the same day? There's Susy Baker making eyes at Albert Glenn, this minnit; and if she ain't carrying Mrs. Glenn some of her ma's blueberry cake! Right by the Darters, too; and Emmy seeing her!"
"What is the matter with Mrs. Darter?"