She knew all about her already from Clover and Katy,
and fell at once under the gentle spell which seemed always to surround
that invalid sofa, begged leave to say "Cousin Helen" as the others did,
and was altogether at her best and sweetest when with her, full of
merriment, but full too of a deference and sympathy which made her
particularly charming.
"I never did see anything so lovely in all my life before," she told
Clover in confidence. "To watch her lying there looking so radiant and so
peaceful and so interested in Katy's affairs, and never once seeming to
remember that except for that accident she too would have been a bride
and had a wedding! It's perfectly wonderful! Do you suppose she is never
sorry for herself? She seems the merriest of us all."
"I don't think she remembers herself often enough to be sorry. She is
always thinking of some one else, it seems to me."
"Well, I am glad to have seen her," added Rose, in a more serious tone
than was usual to her. "She and grandmamma are of a different order of
beings from the rest of the world. I don't wonder you and Katy always were
so good; you ought to be with such a Cousin Helen."
"I don't think we were as good as you make us out, but Cousin Helen has
really been one of the strong influences of our lives. She was the making
of Katy, when she had that long illness; and Katy has made the rest of
us."
Little Rose from the first moment became the delight of the household, and
especially of Amy Ashe, who could not do enough for her, and took her off
her mother's hands so entirely that Rose complained that she seemed to
have lost her child as well as her husband.
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