“The fever?” reproachfully echoed Mrs. Brewster, “Heaven help you for a selfish and fanciful child; did I not send you to bed with a headache last night, and what is it but the remains of that headache that you feel this morning? I can see what it is, you have been fretting about the departure of Charles Taylor; get up out of that hot bed and dress yourself, and come in and attend on your sister; you know she can’t bear to be waited on by anybody but you; get up, I say.” Will Mrs. Brewster remember this to her dying day? I should were I in her place. She suppressed all mention of it to Charles Taylor. “The dear child told me that she did not feel well, but I only thought she had the headache and that she would feel better up,” were the words that she used to him. What sort of a vulture was gnawing at her heart as she spoke them? It was true that in her blind selfishness for one undeserving child she had lost sight of the fact that sickness could come to Janey; she had not allowed herself to believe the probability; she, who accused of selfishness that devoted, generous girl, who was ready at all hours to put her hands under her sister’s feet, and would have given her own life to save Mary Ann’s. Janey got up, got up as best she could, her limbs aching, her head burning; she went into her sister’s room and did for her what she was able, gently, lovingly, anxiously, as before. Ah, my dear reader, let us be thankful that it was so; it is well to be stricken down in the active path of duty, working until we can work no more. She did so. She stayed where she was until the day was half gone, bearing up it is hard to say how. She could not eat breakfast; she could not eat anything. None saw how sick she was; her mother was wilfully blind. Mary Ann had eyes and thoughts for herself alone. “What are you shivering for?” her sister once fretfully asked her. “I feel cold, dear,” was Janey’s unselfish answer; not a word more did she say of her illness. In the afternoon Mrs. Brewster was away from the room attending to domestic affairs, and when she returned the doctor was there; he had been prevented from calling earlier in the day; they found Mary Ann dropped into a doze and Janey stretched out on the floor before the fire, groaning; but the groans ceased as she entered. The doctor, regardless of the waking invalid, strode up to Janey and turned her face to the light. “How long has she been like this?” he asked, his voice shrill with emotion. “Child, child, why did they not send for me?” Poor Janey was then too sick to reply. The doctor carried her up to her room in his arms, and the servants undressed her and laid her in the bed from which she was never more to rise. The fever took violent hold of her, precisely as it had attacked Mary Ann, though scarcely as bad, and danger for Janey was not looked for by her mother. Had Mary Ann not got over a similar crisis they would have feared for Janey, so given are we to judge by collateral circumstances.