Emily
gave her some graceful thanks, and Jane disliked her more than ever.
It was rather a dreary time that now commenced with the young ladies;
they were tired of seeing the same faces continually, and dispirited
by hearing that the fever was spreading in the village. The autumn
was far advanced, the weather was damp and gloomy, and the sisters
sat round the fire shivering with cold, feeling the large room dreary
and deserted, missing the merry voices of the children, and much
tormented by want of occupation. They could not go out, their hands
were not steady enough to draw, they felt every letter which they had
to write a heavy burden; neither Emily nor Lily could like
needlework; they could have no music, for the piano at the other end
of the room seemed to be in an Arctic Region, and they did little but
read novels and childish stories, and play at chess or backgammon.
Jane was the best off. Mrs. Weston sent her a little sock, with a
request that she would make out the way in which it was knit, in a
complicated feathery pattern, and in puzzling over her cotton, taking
stitches up and letting them down, she made the time pass a little
less heavily with her than with her sisters.
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