For a time Mrs. Lincoln was silent, and then in a more subdued tone, she said, “Do as you like, only you must tell Rose. I never can.”

Half an hour after, Mr. Lincoln entered his daughter’s room, and bending affectionately over her pillow, said, “How is my darling to-day?”

“Better, better,—­almost well,” returned Rose, raising herself in bed to prove what she had said.  “I shall be out in a few days, and then you’ll buy me one of those elegant plaid silks, won’t you?  All the girls are wearing them, and I haven’t had a new dress this winter, and here ’tis almost March.”

Oh, how the father longed to tell his dying child that her next dress would be a shroud.  But he could not.  He was too much a man of the world to speak to her of death,—­he would leave that for her grandmother; so without answering her question, he said, “Rose, do you think you are able to be moved into the country?”

“What, to Chicopee? that horrid dull place!  I thought we were not going there this summer.”

“No, not to Chicopee, but to your grandma Howland’s, in Glenwood.  The physician thinks you will be more quiet there, and the pure air will do you good.”

Rose looked earnestly in her father’s face to see if he meant what he said, and then replied, “I’d rather go any where in the world than to Glenwood.  You’ve no idea how, I hate to stay there.  Grandma is so queer, and the things in the house so fussy and countrified,—­and cooks by a fireplace, and washes in a tin basin, and wipes on a crash towel that hangs on a roller!”

Mr. Lincoln could hardly repress a smile at Rose’s reasoning, but perceiving that he must be decided, he said, “We think it best for you to go, and shall accordingly make arrangements to take you in the course of a week or two.  Your mother will stay with you, and Jenny, too, will be there a part of the time;” then, not wishing to witness the effect of his words, he hastily left the room, pausing in the hall to wipe away the tears which involuntarily came to his eyes, as he overheard Rose angrily wonder, “why she should be turned out of doors when she wasn’t able to sit up!”

“I never can bear the scent of those great tallow candles, never,” said she; “and then to think of the coarse sheets and patchwork bedquilts—­oh, it’s dreadful!”

Jenny’s heart, too, was well-nigh bursting, but she forced down her own sorrow, while she strove to comfort her sister, telling her how strong and well the bracing air of the country would make her, and how refreshing when her fever was on would be the clear, cold water which gushed from the spring near the thorn-apple tree, where in childhood they so oft had played.  Then she spoke of the miniature waterfall, which not far from their grandmother’s door, made “fairy-like music;” all the day long, and at last, as if soothed by the sound of that far-off falling water, Rose forgot her trouble, and sank into a sweet, refreshing slumber, in which she dreamed that the joyous summer-time had come, and that she, well and strong as Jenny had predicted, was the happy bride of George Moreland, who led her to a grass-grown grave,—­the grave of Mary Howard, who had died of consumption and been buried in Glenwood!