eesti x cri i aE

NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA,

CHAPTER XXIV.
FORESHADOWINGS.

Two days after this, Alfred St. Clare and Augustine parted ;
and Eva, who had been stimulated by the society of her young
cousin to exertions beyond her strength, began to fail rapidly. St.
Clare was at last willing to call in medical advice, a thing from
which he had always shrunk, because it was the admission of an
unwelcome truth. But for a day or two Eva was so unwell as to
be confined to the house, and the doctor was called.

“Marie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child’s gradually
decaying health and strength, because she was completely absorbed
in studying out two or three new forms of disease to which she
believed she herself was a victim. It was the first principle of
Marie’s belief that nobody ever was or could be so great a sufferer
as herself ; and therefore she always repelled quite indignantly
any suggestion that anyone around her could be sick. She was
always sure in such a case that it was nothing but laziness or want
of energy ; and that if they had had the suffering she had, they
would soon know the difference.

Miss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal
fears about Eva, but to no avail.

“T don't see as anything ails the child,” she would say ; “ she
runs about and plays.”

“ But she has a cough.”

“Cough! you don’t need to tell me about a cough. I've
always been subject to a cough all my days. When I was of Eva's
age, they thought I was in a consumption. Night after night,
Mammy used to sit up with me. Ob, Eva’s cough is not any-
thing !’

« But she gets weak, and is short-breathed.”

“Law! I’ve had that years and years, it’s only @ nervous
affection.”

“ But she sweats so, nights !”

‘“‘ Well, I have these ten years. Very often, night after night,
my clothes will be wringing wet. There won't be a dry thread in
my night-clothes, and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to
hang them up todry! Eva doesn’t sweat anything like that!"

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But now that Eva
was fairly and visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie all on
a sudden took a new turn.

She knew it, she said, she always felt it, that she was destined
to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her

   

Ee er ac an cn em ae I