Phillis was carried downstairs, and lay for hour after hour quite silent
on the great sofa, drawn up under the windows of the house-place. She
seemed always the same, gentle, quiet and sad. Her energy did not return
with her bodily strength. It was sometimes pitiful to see her parents’
vain endeavours to rouse her to interest. One day the minister brought
her a set of blue ribbons, reminding her with a tender smile of a former
conversation in which she had owned to a love of such feminine vanities.
She spoke gratefully to him, but when he was gone she laid them on one
side, and languidly shut her eyes. Another time I saw her mother bring
her the Latin and Italian books that she had been so fond of before her
illness—or rather, before Holdsworth had gone away. That was worst of
all. She turned her face to the wall, and cried as soon as her mother’s
back was turned. Betty was laying the cloth for the early dinner. Her
sharp eyes saw the state of the case.
“Now, Phillis!” said she, coming up to the sofa; “we ha’ done a’ we can
for you, and th’ doctors has done a’ they can for you, and I think the
Lord has done a’ He can for you, and more than you deserve, too, if you
don’t do something for yourself. If I were you, I’d rise up and snuff
the moon, sooner than break your father’s and your mother’s hearts wi’
watching and waiting till it pleases you to fight your own way back to
cheerfulness. There, I never favoured long preachings, and I’ve said my
say.”
A day or two after Phillis asked me, when we were alone, if I thought my
father and mother would allow her to go and stay with them for a couple
of months. She blushed a little as she faltered out her wish for change
of thought and scene.
“Only for a short time, Paul. Then—we will go back to the peace of the
old days. I know we shall; I can, and I will!”