She looked like a faded lily, as she lay there; her white dress
scarcely more white than the forehead and cheek upon which her dark
damp hair rested heavily. Susan took a handkerchief from her pocket,
and wrung it in the clear, cool waters of the brook, and kneeling upon
the ground beside Emma, wiped her pale face, and tucking up her
sleeves, chafed her poor withered arms, until Emma revived.
"Thank you," said she; "I was a little faint. Mamma is so desirous for
me to exercise in the open air, that I go every day to the farthest
limit of my strength. I was not able to climb that hill this morning."
Susan made no reply, but sat looking mournfully into her face. All the
morning she had been weeping over the sorrows of an imaginary being
whom she had found in a novel wandering about, and falling at every
step into the most superlative misery. It was hard for Susan to read,
and not identify herself with this beautiful suffering shadow; but now
she had come from her ideal world, and was forced, for a time, to
forget both the shadow and herself. Close to her father's old
farm-house, and in the woods of Sliver-Crook, she saw what, described
in a romance, would have been pathetic enough, but which, seen in
reality, called out from her heart the good rational sympathy which,
though buried in sentimental rubbish, was not dead.
"Do you really think," said she, bending over Emma, "that you must----"
Emma smiled, as she replied, "What difficulty we find in pronouncing
that word! One would think that there was a sting in the very _name_ of
death: and so there is, Miss Sliver, until God gives us the victory,
through Jesus Christ.
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