CHAPTER XIII.

THE CACHUCA.





TEN days more, and beside the fire in Mrs. Ginniss's attic-room sat
a little figure, propped in the wooden rocking-chair with pillows
and comfortables; while upon a small stand close beside her were
arranged a few cheap toys, a plate with some pieces of orange upon
it, a sprig of geranium in a broken-nosed pitcher of water, and a
cup of beef-tea.

But for none of these did the languid little invalid seem to care;
and lying back in the chair, her head nestled into the pillow, her
parched lips open, and her eyes half closed, she looked so little
like the bright and glowing 'Toinette who had danced at her
birthday-party not a month before, that it is a question if any one
but her own mother would have believed her to be the same.

Mrs. Ginniss, hard at work upon the frills of a fashionable lady's
skirt, paused every few moments to look over her shoulder at the