“For whom else should I live and work?” laughed Mrs. Sutton, in her
cheerful, guileless fashion. “My personal wants are few and easily
supplied, and I like to be busy. I account it a privilege to be able to
fuss about my friends when they are ailing.”
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account