We Five Read Free

affection shown by Carrie and Sylvia Hale for one another?”
    â€œI’ve seen little evidence of it.”
    Mrs. Barton flung a palm to her chest and gasped.
    â€œHold, Mamma. Let me finish. We haven’t the same affection because its character bears no similarity to our own. Carrie and her mother are in some ways more like friends than relations. We are different. You are the mother and I am the daughter, and we know our rôles and we do credit to them.” Maggie cleared her throat. “After a fashion.”
    Mrs. Barton’s frown transformed into a fully blown pout. “I think that I should like to be your friend someday.”
    â€œAnd yet, with all candour, Mamma, I would not choose you for a friend. I simply would not.”
    Clara Barton rose from her bed and then promptly put herself down upon the edge. Her hands made themselves into little fists that bunched and clutched the folds of the counterpane with straitened vexation. “Such a thing to say to one you love! Or do you love me?”
    Maggie sate down next to her mother. She took one of Clara’s hands and laid it within the cradle of her own unturned palms. “Stuff! Of course I love you. I simply mean that as much as I esteem Carrie, I could never be Carrie, and as much as, I’m certain, you esteem Mrs. Hale, you could never be Mrs. Hale. The idea, for example, of spending the entirety of one’s evening reading aloud to one’s mother would be the death of me. You know I can scarcely hold myself still long enough to read a book.”
    â€œNo, but do you not, my daughter, keep yourself still and staid to stitch and baste all the day long?”
    â€œI do not always sit as I sew, Mamma. Sometimes I pace, if you must know. As for books, we haven’t money to buy a single one.”
    â€œNonsense! We could buy a book if we wanted. Mrs. Colthurst gives you a good wage. And the annuity your late uncle left us provides a bit of quarterly interest. We are not paupers.”
    Downstairs the clock on the hearth mantel had begun to chime the time: seven thirty (or very nearly seven thirty, for the clock ran fast). Maggie sprang from the bed. “Now I am late.” She reached down and kissed her mother on the cheek and then pivoted on her heel to face the door, poised for swift retreat. Just as suddenly she bethought herself of that thing which often troubled her. “Oh. The palpitations that came again last night—have they now suspended?”
    Mrs. Barton nodded, smiling pleasantly. “This morning, my dear daughter, I am ticking as regularly as a newly wound clock. My vision is restored as well. It was so cloudy yesterday, but now it is clear.”
    â€œWas it the drops Dr. Osborne gave you?”
    â€œMost assuredly! Molly’s father is a veritable wonder. How fortunate for me that you and Molly are such good friends or I should never have known him—so skilled he is, and so kind and considerate. And I shouldn’t even mention how very little he charges.”
    Maggie shook her head intemperately. “Dr. Osborne cannot charge much above what he does, Mamma, or word would get out that he is practising the medical arts without proper training or proper credentials. In truth, you and I both know he’s a dentist-surgeon. He pulls teeth. Whatever facility he purports to have for healing the sick—and I shall be charitable—has been gained in a most haphazard and piecemeal fashion.”
    Mrs. Barton bristled. “ However the gift has come to him, he is the best I have ever had, and I am quite on my way to a full recovery.”
    â€œAnd he drinks.”
    â€œI thought you were late.”
    â€œI should simply like to remind you that Doctor Osborne, as you have chosen to denominate him, drinks. He drinks gin. More gin than is prudent, according to Molly, who, I fancy, frets about him daily. If you are setting your cap for this doctor, who is not, in fact, a