"Upon my word, young ladies," he said severely, "you seem to think it a fine thing to have been in danger of your lives. If you had really broken all your bones it would have been funnier still, I suppose. What on earth are you laughing at?" for somehow this address tickled the girls' half-hysterical mood into paroxysms of giggling which continued till they cried, and the more Uncle Tom frowned the more they giggled. Aunt Emma saw how it was, and ordered them off to bed, and next morning the reaction had come, and they were pale and nervous and depressed enough to please the most exacting friend who might be anxious to make them "sensible of their escape."
Wednesday, the day before the Jarvises were to leave, had been set aside for a picnic. Emmy had looked forward eagerly to this; so you can imagine her feelings when on Tuesday a hard toothache set in which kept her awake all night, and left her next morning still in such pain and with such a swollen face that it was manifestly impossible for her to leave the house. Kind little Jean offered to give up the picnic and stay at home with her; but neither Emmy nor Aunt Emma would hear of this, and it ended in everybody's going and leaving her in the care of old Eliza, aunty's housekeeper, who had been nurse to all the children in turn, from Tom to Lena, and liked nothing better than a chance to cuddle and cosset any one who was ill.
Her warm fomentations and roasted raisins and pettings and pattings were so effectual that by afternoon Emmy felt quite comfortable again. She grew very fond of kind old Eliza, and her heart being opened by the situation, she ended by telling her how miserable and "unlucky" she had been all the week.
"And indeed I can't see any reason for it, though I'm sorry enough it is so, Miss Emmy," declared Eliza when she had listened to the tale. "Never any young person came here before who didn't look upon this house as a kind of a paradise."
"I know. That's just the way Jean and Bess feel. But then they are different from me. Everybody likes them," said Emmy.
"And pray why shouldn't they like yourself, miss, I'd like to ask?"
"I—don't—know," slowly. "I'm always getting into scrapes and making mistakes, and things don't happen nicely with me as they do with them. Just think of all the misfortunes I've had this week since I came! My train was late, and I was all tired out, and the girls went to Niagara without me, and I broke Aunt Emma's lock, and the horse ran away, and now this toothache! I am very unfortunate."
"Well, I have heard of other people's trains being late afore now," replied Eliza, dryly. "And though I'm sorry you didn't have the trip with the rest, miss, it wasn't nobody's fault that you didn't come in time. It was a pity about the lock, to be sure—the Madam hasn't got it open yet, I know—but so far as the horse goes, it's no more than I'm always expecting, letting Miss Lena drive out by herself with them vicious little rats of ponies. And God sent your toothache, miss, I suppose you know that."
"Well, God made me shy, too, I suppose, and that's my worst misfortune of all," declared Emmy.
"I'm not so sure about that, either," remarked the shrewd old Eliza. "In my opinion, what folks call shyness is very often just another name for selfishness. If you thought about yourself less and about other people more, Miss Emmy, you wouldn't be so shy, as you call it. You'll get better of it as soon as you're old enough to find out that for the most part of the time nobody is noticing what you do or thinking about you at all."