“Oh, I should be so glad if I could,” answered Carrie.

“Could!” repeated Mrs. Hamilton; “you could if you would.  Now, it’s my opinion that you complain altogether too much, and fancy you are a great deal worse than you really are, when all you want is exercise.  A short walk on the piazza, and a little fresh air each, morning, would soon cure you.”

“I know fresh air does me good,” said Carrie; “but walking makes my side ache so hard, and makes me cough so, that Maggie thinks I’d better not.”

Mag, quoted as authority, exasperated Mrs. Hamilton who replied rather sharply, “Fudge on Mag’s old-maidish whims!  I know that any one who eats as much as you do can’t be so very weak!”

“I don’t eat half you send me,” said poor Carrie, beginning to cry at her mother’s unkind remarks; “Willie ’most always comes up here and eats with me.”

“For mercy’s sake, mother, let the child have what she wants to eat, for ’tisn’t long she’ll need it,” said Lenora, suddenly appearing in the room.

“Lenora, go right down; you are not wanted here,” said Mrs. Hamilton.

“Neither are you, I fancy,” was Lenora’s reply, as she coolly seated herself on the foot of Carrie’s bed, while her mother continued: 

“Really, Carrie, you must try and come down to your meals, for you have no idea how much it hinders the work, to bring them up here.  Polly isn’t good for anything until she has conjured up something extra for your breakfast, and then they break so many dishes!”

“I’ll try to come down to-morrow,” said Carrie meekly; and as the door-bell just then rang Mrs. Hamilton departed, leaving her with Lenora, whose first exclamation was: 

“If I were in your place, Carrie, I wouldn’t eat anything, and die quick.”

“I don’t want to die,” said Carrie; and Lenora, clapping her hands together, replied: 

“Why, you poor little innocent, who supposed you did?  Nobody wants to die not even I, good as I am; but I should expect to, if I had the consumption.”

“Lenora, have I got the consumption?” asked Carrie, fixing her eyes with mournful earnestness upon her companion, who thoughtlessly replied: 

“To be sure you have.  They say one lung is entirely gone and the other nearly so.”

Wearily the sick girl turned upon her side; and, resting her dimpled cheek upon her hand, she said softly, “Go away now, Lenora; I want to be alone.”

Lenora complied, and when Margaret returned from the village she found her sister lying in the same position in which Lenora had left her, with her fair hair falling over her face, which it hid from view.

“Are you asleep, Carrie?” said Mag; but Carrie made no answer, and there was something so still and motionless in her repose that Mag went up to her, and pushing back from her face the long silken hair, saw that she had fainted.

The excitement of her stepmother’s visit, added to the startling news which Lenora had told her, was too much for her weak nerves, and for a time she remained insensible.  At length, rousing herself, she looked dreamily around, saying, “Was it a dream, Maggie—–­ all a dream?”