Ellen's health
was worse, her nerves were shattered, and she clung with more and
more insistence to this one healthy companion, who responded with
a tireless devotion. Coming in from her wholesome outdoor life
and her triumphs at school--where she always stood high--Ma'Lou
brought to the sick room a very wind of comfort and cheer, which
Mrs. Kendrick had not the heart to deny her pining young invalid.
Once, when she spoke apprehensively of the matter to her husband,
Scott Kendrick answered with astonishment:
"Why, Fanny, it's only a question of health--a little bodily
improvement. We'd break it off to-morrow if Ellen was well.
You'll see; there would never be any more of it if I could send
her away for that operation."
But the white people had not, as they supposed, this anxiety all
to themselves. The timid, conservative, colored mother regarded
the friendship with growing anxiety. And before Scott Kendrick
got together the money to send Ellen to Baltimore, Ezra Jackson's
wife had coaxed her husband into letting Mary Louise go North to
school. The Watauga public schools, with a term or two of Fiske,
at Nashville, afterward, had been good enough for the other
children.
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