There is a certain period, after convalescence is well progressed, that
is even more trying to many natures than actual illness--that time when
we are supposed to be well, and yet have not quite resumed our wonted
strength.
How the long-dropped burdens of our lives loom up before us now! Is it
possible we ever bent our backs to such a load? Can we ever do it again?
Yet, even as we hesitate, relentless necessity pushes us on, and bids us
hoist the burden.
Sara felt this often now, and all her former bravery seemed gone with
her strength. She had already decided that, next Monday, she must return
to the museum, and bring up her neglected work; then there was a half-
written article to be finished and copied, whose motive and central
thought she had almost forgotten, while at her side loomed a basketful
of stockings to be darned, and garments to be mended before the Sabbath
dawn.
In this reluctant mood, trying to rally her forces for renewed conflict
with life's hard duties, she could not help thinking how different it
might all be--how she might be cared for, instead of looking out for
others; how she might be the centre of a home, enclosed and guarded,
rather than, as now, trying vainly to encompass one, making a wall of
her feeble self to shelter others--and hot tears of rebellious weakness
filled her eyes, and dropped slowly upon the trembling little hands,
which were painfully weaving the threads to and fro through a
preposterous hole in one of Morton's socks.
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