She was also in constant pain, and her face took on permanently the expression that Barty's often wore when he thought he was going blind in Malines, although, like him in those days, she was always lively and droll, in spite of this heavy misfortune, which seemed to break every heart at Marsfield except her own. For, alas! Barty Josselin, who has so lightened for us the sorrow of mere bereavement, and made quick-coming death a little thing--for some of us, indeed, a lovely thing--has not taught us how to bear the sufferings of those we love, the woeful ache of pity for pangs we are powerless to relieve and can only try to share. Endeavor as I will, I find I cannot tell this part of my story as it should be told; it should be a beautiful story of sweet young feminine fortitude and heroic resignation--an angel's story. During the four years that Martia's illness lasted the only comfort I could find in life was to be with her--reading to her, teaching her blaze, rowing her on the river, driving her, pushing or dragging her bath-chair; but, alas! watching her fade day by day. Strangely enough, she grew to be the tallest of all her sisters, and the most beautiful in the face; she was so wasted and thin she could hardly be said to have had a body or limbs at all. I think the greatest pleasure she had was to lie and be sung to by Mary or her father, or played to by Roberta, or chatted to about domestic matters by Leah, or read to by me. She took the keenest interest in everything that concerned us all; she lived out of herself entirely, and from day to day, taking short views of life. It filled her with animation to see the people who came to the house and talk with them; and among these she made many passionately devoted friends. There were also poor children from the families of laborers in the neighborhood, in whom she had always taken a warm interest. She now organized them into regular classes, and taught and amused them and told them stories, sang funny songs to them, and clothed and fed them with nice things, and they grew to her an immense hobby and constant occupation. She also became a quite surprising performer on the banjo, which her father had taught her when she was quite a little girl, and invented charming tunes and effects and modulations that had never been tried on that humble instrument before. She could have made a handsome living out of it, crippled as she was. She seemed the busiest, drollest, and most contented person in Marsfield; she all but consoled us for the dreadful thing that had happened to herself, and laughingly pitied us for pitying her. So much for the teaching of Barty Josselin, whose books she knew by heart, and constantly read and reread.