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The Maiden’s Error
by
The month of March, so trying to a weak and shattered constitution, found her just well enough to venture out to seek for employment at her old business of cigar-making. She readily obtained work, and again sat down to earn for herself and children, the bread that should nourish them. But she was soon made to feel keenly that her health was not as it had been. A severe pain in the side was her daily companion, and she had to toil on, often sick and faint, from daylight until long after others had sought the grateful repose of their pillows. Painfully alive to a sense of dependence, she was ready at any time to work beyond her strength rather than to eat the bread of charity. This kept her steadily bending over her work until nature again became exhausted, and she was forced, from direct debility, to suspend her labours for at least the half of every day. As April came in, with an occasional warm day, her appetite gradually left her, and she began to experience a loathing of food. Weakness, headaches, and other painful warnings of nature, were the consequences. Her earnings were now so small, that she with difficulty procured enough of food for her children. She knew that if she would let Mrs.–know her pressing destitution, food and other necessaries would be supplied; but she shrank from telling her wants. Finding, however, that her strength continued to fail, until she was unable to sit up but for a few hours at a time, and that, in consequence of her extreme weakness, the nausea produced by the tobacco was so great, as to render it almost impossible for her to work in it, she made up her mind to let her boy go in to Mrs.–, with a request to send her some little thing that she could eat, in hopes that something from her table might provoke an appetite.
Mrs.–was sitting at her dinner-table, which was covered with the luxuries of the season, when little Charley came into the room and handed in his poor mother’s request.
“Please, ma’am, mother says will you be so good as to send her some little thing that she could eat. She has no appetite, and not eatin’ makes her so weak.”
“Here’s some pie, Charley,” struck in little Billy. “It’s good, I tell you! Eat it now; and ma, do send in Charley’s mother a piece, too: I know she’ll like it.”
But Billy and his mother did not agree in this. The latter thought a little sago would be much better. So she gave Charley a paper in which were a few spoonfuls of sago.
“Here is some sago, mother,” said Charley, on his return, “Mrs.–says it will do you good.”
Now it so happened that, from a child, she had never liked sago. There was something in it so insipid to her, that she had never felt an inclination to more than taste it. Particularly now did her stomach loathe it. But, even if she had felt an inclination to taste the sago, she had not, at the time, any way to prepare it so as to make it palatable. She did not, however, at the time, send for anything else. She still had some flour and potatoes, and a little change to buy milk, and on these her children fared very well. Healthy food does not cost a great deal in this country, and Mrs. Warburton had long before learned to husband well her resources.
On the next morning she tried to get up, but fainted away on the floor. Her children were still asleep, and were not even awakened by her fall. It was some time before she recovered sufficiently to crawl upon the bed; and there she lay; almost incapable of thought or motion, for hours. As feeble nature reacted again, and she was able to think over her situation, she made up her mind to send in her little boy again to Mrs.–, with an apology for not using the sago, and request her to give her some little thing from her table–anything at all that would be likely, as she said, “to put a taste in her mouth,” and induce an appetite for food. The child delivered the message in the best way he knew how, but some how or other it offended the ear of Mrs.–, who had begun to be tired of what she was pleased to call the importunities of Mrs. Warburton; though, in fact, she had never before even hinted that she was in want of anything. The truth was, Sarah, the housekeeper, had heard something from somebody, about Mrs. Warburton, and had been relating the puerile scandal to Mrs.–, who, instead of opposing the tattling propensity in her servant, encouraged it, by lending to her silly stories an attentive ear. But the story was false, from beginning to end, as are nearly all the idle rumours which are constantly circulating from one family to another, through the medium of servants.