"For a ride!" sez she in amaze, "then she can't be in immediate danger," and then she sez, "Oh, how I have dreaded to come from the almost dying bed of my dear ones in Denver to the sick bed of another."
"Well," sez I, "Dora hain't bed-sick," and, sez I, "you'll see her in a minute, for I hearn 'em at the gate."
Well, when that plump, rosy-cheeked girl, with sparkling, laughing eyes, bounded into the room (her Uncle Josiah had told her that her Ma had come) and threw her arms round her neck and kissed her, you could have knocked Albina Ann over with a pin-feather. I felt conscience-struck, and as if I'd ort to told her. Her face turned ghastly pale under the false color, and she looked at Dora and then at me in a stunted, dum-*foundered, helpless way, pitiful in the extreme, that most made me 'fraid that she had lost her faculty. But pretty soon she gradually brightened up into a happy, blissful look, and her nateral color returned, and how she did hug and embrace Dora, and she sez to me in a solemn way, "It is a mericle, Samantha!"
"No," sez I, "no mericle, only a triumph of common sense and common-sense remedies—pure air, early hours, wholesome food, etc, etc."
And then she noticed her dress, I see—the absence of cosset, the common-sense shoes. But she never lisped a word aginst it, and hain't to this day, so fur as I know. The shock had been too great: she had seen the dead raised to life, as it were, and it had shook a little common sense and gumption into her. I ketched her myself the next mornin' a-lettin' out her travelin' dress, and she let her cosset out some. I have some hopes of her.
