these
things were done. And Hannah delighted to do them, because she adored Ann
Mary, and could not bear to have her sister troubled with any of the
coarse tasks which made up her own happy, busy day.

Now, all that grandmother ever tells me about the beginning of this story
is that when the lovely Ann Mary was nineteen years old she "fell into a
decline," as they called it. She grew pale and thin, never smiled, could
not eat or sleep, and lay listlessly on the bed all day, looking sadly at
Hannah as she bustled about.

A great many girls in those days fell into declines and died. Of course,
nobody knows the reason for most of the cases, but it seems as plain as
the nose on my face that Ann Mary's sickness was entirely Hannah's fault
for not letting her sister do her share of the household work. There she
was--pretty and ignorant and idle--with nothing to interest her, and
nothing to look forward to, for in those days marriage was the only thing
a girl could look forward to, and in the workaday little world of pioneer
Hillsboro nobody would dare to think of marrying a girl who looked like a
tea-rose and did not know how to make soft soap. No wonder she lost her
appetite!

It might not have gone any further, however, if Hannah, distracted with
anxiety, had not run to all the old women in town about her sick sister.
Every one of them had had a niece, or a daughter--or at least a
granddaughter--who had died in a decline; so, of course, they knew just
what to do for Ann Mary, and they came and did it.

Then poor Ann Mary was sick, indeed, I promise you! They shut her up in
the inner room of the little log house, although it was the end of May,
and the weather was fit for the angels. They darkened the one window, and
kept the door closed, and put the sick girl to bed between two mountains
of feathers. They gave her "sut" (soot) tea and "herb-drink" and steeped
butternut bark, and goodness knows what else; and they tiptoed in and out,
and stared at her mournfully, and shook their heads and pursed up their
lips, until it is a wonder to me that Ann Mary did not die at once.

II.

Very likely she would have died, if one day in June there had not come
through Hillsboro a trader on his way from "over the mountain" up to
Canada, looking for furs. That morning, when Hannah got up, she found the
fire in their big fireplace completely extinguished. She snatched up the
warming-pan--not a polished brass one with a smooth,