“How they gawk at you,” whispered Temperance.  I felt my color rise.

“The gentlemen do not guess that we are sisters,” said Veronica quietly.

“How do I look?” I asked.

“You know how, and that I do not agree with your opinion.  You look cruel.”

“I am cruel hungry.”

Her eyes sparkled with disdain.

“What do you mean to do for a year?” I continued.

“Forget you, for one thing.”

“I hope you wont be ill again, Verry.”

“I shall be,” she answered with a shudder; “I need all the illnesses that come.”

“As for me,” I said, biting my bread and butter, “I feel well to my fingers’ ends; they tingle with strength.  I am elated with health.”

I had not spoken the last word before I became conscious of a streak of pain which cut me like a knife and vanished; my surprise at it was so evident that she asked me what ailed me.”

“Nothing.”

“I never had the feeling you speak of in my finger ends,” she said sadly, looking at her slender hand.

“Poor girl!”

“What has come over you, Cass?  An attack of compassion?  Are you meaning to leave an amiable impression with me?”

After supper Mr. Shepherd asked mother if she would go to the theater.  The celebrated tragedian, Forrest, was playing; would the young ladies like to see Hamlet?  We all went, and my attention was divided between Hamlet and two young men who lounged in the box door till Mr. Shepherd looked them away.  Veronica laughed at Hamlet, and Temperance said it was stuff and nonsense.  Veronica laughed at Ophelia, also, who was a superb, black-haired woman, toying with an elegant Spanish fan, which Hamlet in his energy broke.  “It is not Shakespeare,” she said.

“Has she read Shakespeare?” I asked mother.

“I am sure I do not know.”

That night, after mother and Veronica were asleep, I persuaded Temperance to get up, and bore my ears with a coarse needle, which I had bought for the purpose.  It hurt me so, when she pierced one, that I could not summon resolution to have the other operated on; so I went to bed with a bit of sewing silk in the hole she had made.  But in the morning I roused her, to tell her I thought I could bear to have the other ear bored.  When mother appeared I showed her my ears red and sore, insisting that I must have a certain pair of white cornelian ear-rings, set in chased gold, and three inches long, which I had seen in a shop window.  She scolded Temperance, and then gave me the money.

The next day mother and I started for Rosville.  Veronica decided to remain in Boston with Temperance till mother returned.  She said that if she went she might find Mrs. Morgeson as disagreeable as Mr. Morgeson was; that she liked the Bromfield; besides, she wanted to see the missionary children off for Bombay, and intended to go down to the ship on the day they were to sail.  She was also going to ask Mr. Shepherd to look up a celebrated author for her.  She must see one if possible.