She who had always been a rough but devoted nurse
in sickness was now herself overtaken by vague irregular disorders which
involved the greatest care and the absence of all exciting causes.
The attendance of McKinstry and Cressy at a "crazy quilting party" had
brought on "blind chills;" the importation of a melodeon for Cressy to
play on had superinduced an "innerd rash," and a threatened attack of
"palsy creeps" had only been warded off by the timely postponement of
an evening party suggested by her daughter. The old nomadic instinct,
morbidly excited by her discontent, caused her to lay artful plans for
a further emigration. She knew she had the germs of "mash fever" caught
from the adjacent river; she related mysterious information, gathered
in "class meeting," of the superior facilities for stock raising on the
higher foot-hills; she resuscitated her dead and gone Missouri relations
in her daily speech, to a manifest invidious comparison with the living;
she revived even the incidents of her early married life with the same
baleful intent.
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