nets, sitting all day knotting twine with dirty tar-blackened fingers.

The next morning when she went downstairs it was Belle and not Mrs.
Triplett who was stepping about the kitchen in a big gingham apron,
preparing breakfast. Mrs. Triplett was still in bed. Such a thing had
never happened before within Georgina's recollection.

"It's the rheumatism in her back," Belle reported. "It's so bad she can't
lie still with any comfort, and she can't move without groaning. So she's
sort of 'between the de'il and the deep sea.' And touchy is no name for
it. She doesn't like it if you don't and she doesn't like it if you do;
but you can't wonder when the pain's so bad. It's pretty near lumbago."

Georgina, who had finished her dressing by tying the prism around her
neck, was still burning with the desire which Uncle Darcy's talk had
kindled within her, to be a little comfort to everybody.

"Let me take her toast and tea up to her," she begged. With that toast
and tea she intended to pass along the good word Uncle Darcy had given
her--"the line to live by." But Tippy was in no humor to be adjured by a
chit of a child to bear up and steer right onward. Such advice would have
been coldly received just then even from her minister.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she exclaimed testily. "Bear
up? Of course I'll bear up. There's nothing else _to_ do with
rheumatism, but you needn't come around with any talk of putting rainbows
around it or me either."

She gave her pillow an impatient thump with her hard knuckles.