"
"Oh, Teresa!" I cried, "how can you say such a thing! Why, she's never
sick! She's much bigger and stronger and more vigorous than even I am. And
besides, I never, never could bear it to have Paula taken from me!"
"Hush! Hush, child! Don't shout that way, Paula will hear you! Besides it's
just a foolish idea of mine, maybe. But if God should wish it--But there,
as you say, what would we do without the dear girl?"
Later when we were alone in our bedroom I said to Paula in an anxious tone,
"You don't feel sick; do you, Paula?"
She looked at me surprised--"I should say not!" She laughed, "What put such
a notion in your head? Do I look as if I was sick?"
I was so relieved! Teresa was quite mistaken!
"No!" continued Paula, "on the contrary, I never felt better in my life.
Since I had that little touch of scarletina a while ago I've never had an
ache or a pain. In fact, as I look around and see so much sickness and
suffering, I long to share my good health with these other less fortunate
ones."
And as I looked at her tall well-developed figure outlined against the
window, I laughed at my foolish fears. But a few moments later as she
kneeled there in the moonlight in her long white night-dress, and as I
looked at that pure beautiful face with the eyes closed in prayer, with its
frame of glorious hair, I knew that never had I seen anything so lovely as
this child companion of mine just budding into womanhood; and the one word
"Angel" seemed to express the sum of my thoughts regarding this dear one
who had come into my life and who had transformed so many other lives
around me.
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