70 The Real Charlotte. 



out boots that lay on the floor where she had thrown them 

 off, and the rags stuffed into the broken panes in the window, 

 were facts that crowded out all consolation from bygone 

 glories. 



'' Well, Miss Duffy," said Charlotte, drawing up a chair 

 to the bedside, and looking at her hostess with a critical 

 eye, " I'm sorry to see you so sick ; when Billy Grainy left 

 the milk last night he told Norry you were laid up in bed, 

 and I thought I'd come over and see if there was anything I 

 could do for you." 



" Thank ye, Miss Mullen," replied Julia stiffly, sipping 

 the nauseous gruel with ladylike decorum, " I have all I 

 require here." 



" Well, ye know, Miss Duffy, I wanted to see how you 

 are," said Charlotte, slightly varying her attack ; " I'm a bit 

 of a doctor, like yourself Peggy Roche below told me you 

 had what she called ' an impression on the heart,' but it 

 looks to me more like a touch of liver." 



The invalid does not exist who can resist a discussion of 

 symptoms, and Miss Duffy's hauteur slowly thawed before 

 Charlotte's intelligent and intimate questions. In a very 

 short time Miss Mullen had felt her pulse, inspected her 

 tongue, promised to send her a bottle of unfailing efficacy, 

 and delivered an exordium on the nature and treatment of 

 her complaint. 



" But in deed and in truth," she wound up, " if you want 

 my opinion, I'll tell you frankly that what ails you is you're 

 just rotting away with the damp and loneliness of this place. 

 I declare that sometimes when I'm lying awake in my bed at 

 nights, I've thought of you out here by yourself, without an 

 earthly creature near you if you got sick, and wondered at 

 you. Why, my heavenly powers ! ye might die a hundred 

 deaths before anyone would know it ! " 



Miss Duffy picked up a corner of the sheet and wiped the 

 gruel from her thin lips. 



" If it comes to that, Miss Mullen/' she said with some 

 resumption of her earlier manner, " if I'm for dying I'd as 

 soon die by myself as in company ; and as for damp, I thank 

 God this house was built by them that didn't spare money 

 on it, and it's as dry this minyute as what it was forty years 



