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That evening, at tea-time, Mr. Walton observed that Lizzy eat scarcely any thing, and that her face was a little pale. He also noted an expression that indicated either mental or bodily suffering–not severe, but enough to make itself visible.

“Are you not well?” he asked.

“Oh yes, very well,” was the quick reply.

“You are fatigued, then?”

“A little.”

“Go early to bed. A night’s sleep will restore all.”

Mr. Walton said this, rather because he hoped than believed that it would be so.

“Oh yes. A night’s rest is all I want,” replied Lizzy.

But she erred in this.

“Where is Lizzy?” asked Mr. Walton, on meeting his sister-in-law at the breakfast-table on the next morning. The face of the latter wore a sober expression.

“Not very well, I am sorry to say,” was the answer.

“What ails her?”

“She has taken a bad cold; I hardly know how–perhaps from getting her feet wet yesterday; and is so hoarse this morning that she can scarcely speak above a whisper.”

“I feared as much,” was the old gentleman’s reply. “Have you sent for your doctor?”

“Not yet.”

“Then do so immediately. A constitution like her’s will not bear the shock of a bad cold, unless it is met instantly by appropriate remedies.”

In due time the family physician came. He looked serious when he saw the condition of his patient.

“To what are you indebted for this?” he asked.

“To thin shoes,” was the prompt reply of the uncle, who was present.

“I have warned you against this more than once,” said the doctor, in a tone of gentle reproof.

“Oh, no; brother is mistaken,” spoke up Mrs. Walton. “She wore thick-soled shoes. But the streets, as you know, were very wet yesterday, and it was impossible to keep the feet dry.”

“If she had worn good, stout, sensible leather boots, as she ought to have done, the water would never have touched her feet,” said Mr. Walton.

“You had on your gums?” remarked the physician, turning to Lizzy.

“They are so clumsy and unsightly–I never like to wear them,” answered the patient, in a husky whisper, and then she coughed hoarsely.

The doctor made no reply to this, but looked more serious.

Medicine was prescribed and taken; and, for two weeks, the physician was in daily attendance. The inflammation first attacked Lizzy’s throat–descended and lingered along the bronchial tubes, and finally fixed itself upon her lungs. From this dangerous place it was not dislodged, as an acute disease, until certain constitutional predispositions had been aroused into activity. In fact, the latent seeds of that fatal disease, known as consumption, were at this time vivified. Dormant they might have lain for years–perhaps through life–if all exciting causes had been shunned. Alas! the principle of vitality was now awakened.

Slowly, very slowly, did strength return to the body of Miss Walton. Not until the spring opened was she permitted to go forth into the open air. Then her pale cheek, and slow, feeble steps, showed too plainly the fearful shock her system had received.

A week or two after his remonstrance with his niece about her thin shoes, Mr. Walton returned home. Several letters received by him during the winter advised him of the state of Lizzy’s health. In the spring her mother wrote to him–

“Lizzy is much better. The warm weather, I trust, will completely restore her.”

But the old gentleman knew better. He had been a deeply interested party in a case like her’s before. He knew that summer, with its warm and fragrant airs, would not bring back the bloom to her cheeks. In July came another epistle.

“The hot weather is so debilitating for Lizzy, that I am about taking her to the sea-shore.”

Uncle Thomas sighed as he read this, permitted the letter to droop from before his eyes, and sat for some time gazing upon vacancy. Far back his thoughts had wandered, and before the eyes of his mind was the frail, fading form of a beloved sister, who had, years before, left her place and her mission upon the earth, and passed up higher.

“The doctor says that I must go South with Lizzy,” wrote Mrs. Walton early in December, “and spend the winter. We leave for Charleston next Tuesday, and may pass over to Havana.”

Uncle Thomas sighed as before, and then became lost in a sad reverie. He had been to Havana with both of his sisters. The warm South had been of use to them. It prolonged, but did not save their lives.

And so the months passed on–the seasons came and went–but health, alas! returned not to the veins of the lovely girl.

It was an autumn day, nearly two years after that fatal cold, taken in consequence of wearing thin shoes, that Mr. Walton received a letter sealed with a black seal.

“As I feared,” he murmured, in a low, sad voice, gazing half-abstractedly upon the missive. He knew too well its contents. “Dear child! I saw this from the beginning.”

And the old man’s eyes became dim with moisture.

He had not erred in his conjecture. Lizzy Walton was dead.