Page:The New Penelope.djvu/193

 boards, roofed with leaky canvas and unfurnished with a single comfort of life, into a house or home. At last, Jack seemed to guess her thoughts, for she never spoke them.

"If I could sell my mine," he then often said, "I could fix things up."

"If you sold your mine, Jack, you would go back to New York, and then there would be no need of fixing up this place." Alice wanted to say "horrid" place, but refrained.

At length, from uncongenial air, water, food, and circumstances in general, the transplanted flower began to droop. The great heat and rarified mountain air caused frantic headaches, aggravated by the glare which came through the white canvas roof. Then came the sudden mountain tempests, when the rain deluged everything, and it was hard to find a spot to stand in where the water did not drip through. She grew wild, looking forever at bare mountain sides simmering in the sun by day, and at night over their tops up to the piercing stars. A constant anxious fever burnt in her blood, that the cold night air could not quench, though she often left her couch to let it blow chilly over her, in her loose night robes. Then she fell really ill.

Sitting by her bedside, Jack said: "If I could sell my mine!" And she had answered, "let the mine go, Jack, and let us go home. Nothing is gained by stopping in this dreadful place."

Then Mr. Hastings had replied to her, "I have no money, Alice, to go home with, not a cent. I borrowed ten dollars of Earle to-day to buy some fruit for you."

That was the last straw that broke the camel's back. By night Mrs. Hastings was delirious, and Dr. Earle was called.

"She has a nervous fever," he said, "and needs the carefullest nursing."

"Which she cannot have in this d——d place," Mr. Hastings replied, profanely.

"Why don't you try to get something to do?" asked Earle of the sad-visaged husband, a day or two after.