nd a simple child; but once getting
hold of a clue of truth, my mind never let it go. Step by step, as a
child could, I followed it out. And the balance of the golden rule, to
which I was accustomed, is an easy one to weigh things in; and even
little hands can manage it.

For an hour after they put me to bed my heart seemed to grow chill
from minute to minute; and my body, in curious sympathy, shook as if I
had an ague. My aunt and Miss Pinshon came and went and were busy
about me; making me drink negus and putting hot bricks to my feet.
Preston stole in to look at me; but I gathered that neither then nor
afterwards did he reveal to any one the matter of our conversation the
hour before. "Wearied"--"homesick"--"feeble"--"with no sort of
strength to bear anything"--they said I was. All true, no doubt; and
yet I was not without powers of endurance, even bodily, if my mind
gave a little help. Now the trouble was, that all such help was
wanting. The dark figures of the servants came and went too, with the
others; came and stayed; Margaret and Mammy Theresa took post in my
room, and when they could do nothing for me, crouched by the fire and
spent their cares and energies in keeping that in full blast. I could
hardly bear to see them; but I had no heart to speak even to ask that
they might be sent away, or for anything else; and I had a sense
besides that it was a gratification to them to be near me; and to
gratify any one of the race I could have borne a good deal of pain.

It smites my heart now, to think of those hours. The image of them is
sharp and fresh as if the time were but last night. I lay with shut
eyes, taking in as it seemed to be, additional loads of trouble with
each quarter of an hour; as I thought and thought, and put one and
another thing together, of things past and present, to help my
understanding. A child will carry on that process fast and to far-off
results; give her but the key and set her off on the track of truth
with a sufficient impetus. My happy childlike ignorance and childlike
life was in a measure gone; I had come into the world of vexed
questions, of the oppressor and the oppressed, the full and the empty,
the rich and the poor. I could make nothing at all of Preston's
arguments and reasonings. The logic of expediency and of consequences
carried no weight with me, and as little the logic of self-interest. I
sometimes think a child's vision is clearer, even in worldly matters,
than the eye