By way of doing as she liked, she attacked the disorderly room.  Rosa’s three trunks stood in a row against the wall—­all of them open—­the tray of the largest lying beside it upon the carpet, the lid of this thrown back and the contents in utter confusion; laces hanging over the sides and trailing upon the floor.  A casket of medicines was uppermost in the next trunk, crushing a confused medley of collars, ribbons, gloves, and handkerchiefs.  A dressing-gown lay upon the seat of one chair, a skirt over the back of another; boots and slippers peeped from the valance of the antique bedstead; there was a formidable array of bottles upon mantel and bureau—­conspicuous among them cod-liver oil, cologne, and laudanum—­incongruous appendages to the various appliances of the toilette scattered between them.

Mrs. Sutton understood it all—­the hurry and agitation of the unlooked-for arrival; the faintness and prostration of the consumptive; the restless night, and the well-meant but inefficient ministrations of negroes in an establishment where the mistress had been feeble for years, and was now chained to her room and chair by paralysis.

“And Rosa was always an indolent flyabout in health; accustomed to have a score of servants at her heels to pick up whatever she dropped or threw aside,” she said to herself.  “My Mabel was a pink of neatness and order compared with her.  Dear me! here is a bottle of oil, cracked, and an immense grease-spot in the front breadth of a splendid silk dress!  I hope these things do not annoy her as they would me!”

Whether the universal disarray made Rosa uncomfortable or not, she enjoyed the aspect of the tidy apartment, when her nurse brought her noiseless labors to a close by exchanging her night-gown for a flannel wrapper; putting clean linen upon her and the bed; combing the tangled hair and washing her hands, wrists, and face in tepid water, interfused with cologne.

“It prevents a sick person from taking cold when bathed, and freshens her up wonderfully, I think,” was her explanation of the fragrant preparation.

“You freshen me more than all things else combined!” said Rosa, gratefully.  “Ah, auntie! how often I have thought of, and wished for you this tedious and dismal winter!  I used to spend entire weeks in bed, attended by a horrid hired nurse, who took snuff and drank—­ugh! and snubbed and terrified me whenever I—­as she described it—­’took a notion into my head;’ that is, when I asked for something she thought was too troublesome for her ladyship to prepare, or wanted Fred to stay all night in my room, or sit by me in the evening, and pet me.  She ’couldn’t bear to have men around, cluttering up everything!’ she would growl the instant his back was turned, with a deal more of the same talk, until I was afraid to ask him to take a seat the next time he came in.  He was continually bringing home baskets of fruit, and game, and bouquets for me.  She let me have