To
the busy lady a book was a book, a kind of general fertilizer of
the mind, and as Madge usually took cold when she went out, and was
assuredly acquiring from the multitude of volumes she devoured all
the knowledge a woman needed, she was safer in the evenly heated city
house. The sisters had independent fortunes of their own, and the
great point in Mrs. Muir's mind was that they should live and enjoy
them. If Madge was only sufficiently coddled now while she was
growing, she would get strong eventually; and so the good lady, who
had as much knowledge of hygiene as of Sanscrit, tempted the invalid
with delicacies, permitted her to eat the confectionery that Graydon
brought so often, and generally indulged a nature that needed wise and
firm development.
Thus Madge lived on, growing more pale and languid with each
succeeding year. The absence in the mountains and at the seashore
which Mr. Muir permitted to his family every summer brought changes
for the better, even though the young girl spent most of the time in a
hammock or reclining in the stern of a sail-boat. She could not escape
the invigoration caused by the mere breathing of pure air, but during
the winters in town she lost all and more than she had gained, and
sunk back into her old apathetic life.
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