straight except myself.  I felt that I was the most miserable creature in the world, and I saw no hope of ever being otherwise all my life long.  Once one of the school children died, and all her schoolmates walked in the funeral procession to the church.  I would not walk with them, but hid myself among the grown people; for every one was looking at the children and I wanted to escape observation.  I heard one woman say to another:  ’It is lucky the child’s mother has so much to do; she will have no time to think about her sorrow, and she will get over it the sooner,’ Then it came to me like a ray of hope, that if I had work to do, I might forget my sorrow too.  I must have work.  That very day I begged my mother to let me learn to work.  She was pleased, and sent me to take lessons in sewing, and I followed it up till I could do all sorts of fine work, and had as much employment as I could wish.  I often heard people say, ‘How finely Sabina is getting on!’ But how do you think it was with my spirits?  Just as it is with yours now, Veronica.  Oh yes, you needn’t look at me so with your great eyes.  I know exactly what you are thinking.  You think that my trouble never can have been equal to yours.  People always think that their own sorrows are the worst.  I sat and sewed just as you do—­early and late; my work was perfect; I had no rival.  I knew that it was good, and I rejoiced over it in a half-hearted way; but what good did it do me after all?  The thought that I was a hunchback, was always in my mind.  It was like a stream of troubled water flowing through my heart; it spoiled everything.  ’Always deformed, never like other girls,’ I never forgot it for a moment.  So it went on till I was about twenty years old, and then came on the trouble in my foot, and I was confined to my bed for many months.  Oh! how bitterly I suffered!  Was every misfortune to fall on me alone?’ I thought.  How could I foresee that this very trouble would turn out to be good fortune for me?”

“The doctor came to see me constantly; he took as much interest in my case as if I could have paid him handsomely.

He noticed that I was industrious, that I did not lie idle even when I was in great pain.  It pleased him to find me always with work in my hand.  When at last the acute attack was over, and the doctor told me that this would be his last visit, he told me also that I was lame for life.  At first I could not walk at all; but bye and bye I learned to use my crutches.  When I offered the doctor the money that was due him for his attendance, he said we would not speak of that; that we both had to work, but with this difference, that he was sound and whole, while I was not.  He took my hand kindly, saying that it was hard for me not to be able to take any amusement after working hard all the week; not to go out with the others on Sunday; and that if I cared for reading, his wife had a great many nice books which she would be glad to lend me, and they would make the Sundays less tedious.