i

cic eaten

232 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; OR,

wretched health, and her only darling child going down to the
grave before her eyes! And Marie routed up Mamnty at nights,
and rumpussed and scolded with more energy than ever all day,
on the strength of this new misery.

“‘ My dear Marie, don’t talk so!” said St. Clare. ‘You ought
not to give up the case so, at once.”

“You have not a mother’s feelings, St. Clare! You never
could understand me !—you don’t now.” |

~* But don’t talk so, as if it were a gone case!”

I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If you
don’t feel when your only child is in this alarming state, J do.
It’s a blow too much for me, with all I was bearing before.’

“It’s true,” said St. Clare, ‘that Eva is very delicate, that I
always knew; and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust
her strength ; and that her situation is critical. But just nowshe
is only prostrated by the heat of the weather, and by the excite-
mentof her cousin’s visit, and the exertions she made. The phy-
sician says there is room for hope.” :

‘* Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side, pray do;
it’s a mercy if people haven’t sensitive feelings in this world. I am
sure I wish I didn’t feel as I do—it only makes me completely
wretched! I wish I could be as easy as the rest of you!”

And the “rest of them” had good reason to breathe the same
prayer, for Marie paraded her new misery as the reason and apo-
logy for all sorts of inflictions on everyone about her. Every word
that was spoken by anybody, everything that was done or was not
done everywhere, was only a new proof that she was surrounded
by hard-hearted, insensible beings, who were unmindful of her
peculiar sorrows. Poor Eva heard some of those speeches; and
nearly cried her little eyes out in pity for her mamma, and in
sorrow that she should make her so much distress.

In a week or two there was # great improvement of symptoms—
one of those deceitful lulls by which her inexorable disease so often
beguiles the anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave. Eva’s
step was again in the garden—in the balconies; she played and
laughed agairf, and her father, in a transport, declared that they
should soon have her as hearty as anybody. Miss Ophelia and
the physician alone felt no encouragement from this illusive truce.
There was one other heart, too, that felt the same certainty, and
that was the little heart of Eva. What is it that sometimes speaks
in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short?
Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul’s impulsive
throb, as immortality draws on? Be it what it may, it rested in
the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven
was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet asthe bright still-
ness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by
sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

For the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was