f them. It is
a sad confession to make, but now, for the first time since my marriage,
I feel thankful that we have no more.

17th.--A dread came over me last night, after I had comforted William as
well as I could about the future, and had heard him fall off to sleep,
that the doctor had not told us the worst. Medical men do sometimes
deceive their patients, from what has always seemed to me to be
misdirected kindness of heart. The mere suspicion that I had been
trifled with on the subject of my husband's illness, caused me such
uneasiness, that I made an excuse to get out, and went in secret to the
doctor. Fortunately, I found him at home, and in three words I confessed
to him the object of my visit.

He smiled, and said I might make myself easy; he had told us the worst.

"And that worst," I said, to make certain, "is, that for the next six
months my husband must allow his eyes to have the most perfect repose?"

"Exactly," the doctor answered. "Mind, I don't say that he may not
dispense with his green shade, indoors, for an hour or two at a time, as
the inflammation gets subdued. But I do most positively repeat that he
must not _employ_ his eyes. He must not touch a brush or pencil; he must
not think of taking another likeness, on any consideration whatever, for
the next six months. His persisting in finishing those two portraits,
at the time when his eyes first began to fail, was the real cause of all
the bad symptoms that we have had to combat ever since. I warned him
(if you remember, Mrs. Kerby?) when he first came to practice in our
neighborhood."

"I know you did, sir," I replied. "But what was a poor traveling
portrait-painter like my husband, who lives by taking likenesses first
in one place and then in another, to do? Our bread depended on his using
his eyes, at the very time when you warned him to let them have a rest."

"Have you no other resources? No money but the money Mr. Kerby can get
by portrait-painting?" asked the doctor.

"None," I answered, with a sinking at my heart as I thought of his bill
for medical attendance.

"Will you pardon me?" he said, coloring and looking a little uneasy,
"or, rather, will you ascribe it to the friendly interest I feel in you,
if I ask whether Mr. Kerby realizes a comfortable income by the
practice of his profession? Don't," he went on anxiously, before I
could reply--"pray don't think I make this inquiry from a motive of
impertinent curiosity!"

I felt qui