The Heiress of Mcgregor by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

MARION'S recovery was very slow and tedious. What she gained one week, she lost the next. She was able to sit up a part of every day, and after a while to go to dinner and tea, and even to spend an evening in the parlour now and then, but she could not walk any distance or sit up on a straight chair. There were many days when her back and head were racked with pain, and she could only lie still in her darkened room and endure.

It was a severe trial to Marion, who had never known sickness, and there were times when she found it very hard to be patient, especially when her services seemed so much needed. Henry continued very unwell, and Aunt Eugenia grew more and more feeble all the time.

Betsy did not get up very well from the measles. Her eyes had been greatly affected by the disease, and in her hurry to get back to her beloved music, she had tried them too soon, so that they were now quite useless for reading or work. It must be confessed that under this infliction, Betsy became rather an infliction herself. She practiced the pieces she knew by heart, and went over her scales and exercises till they became a weariness to the flesh.

"There's one thing about it, Betsy," said Marion to her one day when she was lying flat on the floor before the open fire in Marion's room. "Cousin Helen says you are gaining in your fingering all the time."

"Yes, but just think how much I am losing in other ways! " said Betsy, dolefully. "If I had Stanley here to practice duets with, it would be something. I think she might have stayed."

"She couldn't stay any longer, you know. She would have lost her place in the school, and we should not like to have her do that."

"Of course not," said Betsy. "I'm not a selfish monster, I hope."

"Why, no, I hope not, certainly," said Marion, smiling. "I don't think it shows that you are one because you don't want Stannie away. I am sure I miss her enough."

"But isn't it too bad that I have to give up everything so? " said Betsy. "Come, now, Marion, do pity me a little. I'm hungry for some sympathy."

"I pity you very much," said Marion. "It is real hard to have to stop your lessons in the middle just as you are so engaged about them; but, Betsy dear, you haven't been obliged to give up everything, have you? Didn't I hear of your walking over to the run, and riding out with your father to measure the bark, and with Bram to salt the colts up on the hill lot yesterday? I should like to do some of those things pretty well, I think."

"To be sure, you poor old dear! I can run all over as well as ever, and you have to sit or lie here all day. I am a thankless old lobster," exclaimed Betsy, trying hard to find an appropriate epithet. "I ought to go blind entirely for being so unthankful. But, after all, your being laid up don't make it any easier for me, now, does it? Gerty said it ought to be enough for me that I wasn't born blind like Aunt Eugenia, but I couldn't see that her being born blind was any consolation."

"I must say I never do understand that sort of consolation," said Marion. "It makes me think of grandfather's story about the woman who lost her potatoes by the rot. When she was condoled with on the subject, she answered cheerfully,-

"Yes, minister, but it's a great comfort that all the other folks's potatoes are much worse."

"Your grandfather must be lovely, I think," said Betsy. "I suppose he knows all sorts of Scotch stories. I should think you would have made him tell you hundreds of them."

"To tell you the truth, Betsy, I never half appreciated grandfather nor any of my other friends when I lived at home," said Marion sighing. "I was as full as I could be of all sorts of silly notions, and fancied I was very superior because I didn't take an interest in things about me. Oh dear! You don't know how I do want to see grandfather and Aunt Baby again!"

"There! Don't cry," said Betsy, alarmed.

"No, I won't, because I shall make my head ache and be more of a nuisance than I am now. But, Betsy, about your lessons. I don't believe but I might help you, or at least that we might help each other," said Marion, correcting herself. "I could read over the lessons to you-some of them, at least. We could go on with our English history and learn a French lesson every day, and that would be something."

"I should think it was," exclaimed Betsy, jumping up. "But about the Latin, Marie. Don't you hate to stop that? And yet I don't see how we could manage."

"I think I do. We will do our French one day, and the next we will learn some Latin by heart, or take a lesson in the grammar. Don't you know Harry says we are deficient in grammar, like all other girls? " said Marion, smiling as she repeated the remark with which Harry delighted to "aggravate" Betsy.

"Set him up, indeed! But on your sick days?"