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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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“I don’t see as anything ails the child,” she would say; “she runs about, and plays.” “But she has a cough.” “Cough! you don’t need to tell me about a cough. I’ve always been subject to a cough, all my days. When I was of Eva’s age they thought I was in a consump- tion. Night after night, Mammy used to sit up with me. O! Eva’s cough is not any- thing.” “But she gets weak, and is short-breathed.” “Law! I’ve had that, years and years; it’s only a nervous affection.” “But she sweats so nights.” “Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after night, my clothes will be wringing wet. There won’t be a dry thread in my night-clothes, and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up to dry! Eva doesn’t sweat anything like that!” Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now that Eva was fairly and visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie, all on a sudden, took a new turn. “She knew it,” she said; “she always felt it, that she was destined to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was with her wretched health, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her eyes;”- and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new misery. |
