“So you are Sheila? Come here and sit down, and let us talk. I have heard a lot about you, and I suppose you’ve heard plenty about me. I wonder what kind of things the Tom Cossarts say about me in private. I always think they call me a humbug.”
“No, they don’t,” answered Sheila quickly, as she came forward, “I think they are kind people. They were all very kind to me.”
“I suppose you would have liked to stay there altogether. You don’t think it will be so amusing, shut up here with me.”
“I can’t tell till I try,” answered Sheila smiling, rather puzzled by Effie’s sharp speeches. “I liked being in River Street pretty well. But—well—it didn’t seem much like home. This house is much nicer. I think if you like having me, I shall like being here. I hope you will like me, Effie.”
Sheila spoke simply and impulsively, and Effie smiled, and her face looked pleasanter than it had done as yet.
“Oh, I daresay we shall get on. I’m not so cross as I expect you’ve been told. Once I was just cram full of fun, but being ill takes the life out of you. Sometimes I hate everything and everybody, but then I get better, and things seem different. Have you ever been ill? Do you know what it’s like?”
“Not much,” answered Sheila, “I’m very strong. Oscar has been ill oftener than I. Tell me about yourself, Effie? I want to know everything. Your mother wants me to be a sort of sister to you. Sisters ought to know everything about each other.”
Effie, nothing loath, began a long history of herself. In a few days’ time Sheila had discovered that the way to keep her most satisfied and entertained was to let her talk about herself. Poor child, it was scarcely her own fault. Her mother never tired of asking her about her every symptom, and listening to her accounts of how every hour had been passed. She talked almost ceaselessly of Effie to everybody who would listen. She had almost lost her identity in that of her last surviving child. It seemed to Sheila that poor Effie had had enough doctors and enough experiments in treatment tried upon her to kill anybody, and when she ventured to say as much to Effie herself, the girl at once and cordially agreed.
“I hate the very sight of them. I feel as though I’d never have another near me. I mean not to care now whether I get better or not. The harder I try, the worse I am. I’m just not going to care about anything again!”
That was decidedly one of Effie’s moods—a sort of defiance of everything and everybody. At other times she would be gentler, sometimes she was depressed. Then she would have a spell of high spirits, in which she often overdid herself, and brought on one of her attacks of breathlessness and oppression.