"Anne!" says she, in a fright. "For gracious sake, what's come to you! Are you out of your senses?"
"Oh, Mary! Mary!" says I, holding up the bottle before her, "if I hadn't come in when I did--" And I laid hold of her to shake her again.
She looked puzzled at me for a moment--then smiled (the first time I had seen her do so for many a long day)--then put her arms round my neck.
"Don't be frightened about me, Anne," she says; "I am not worth it, and there is no need."
"No need!" says I, out of breath--"no need, when the bottle has got Poison marked on it!"
"Poison, dear, if you take it all," says Mary, looking at me very tenderly, "and a night's rest if you only take a little."
I watched her for a moment, doubtful whether I ought to believe what she said or to alarm the house. But there was no sleepiness now in her eyes, and nothing drowsy in her voice; and she sat up in bed quite easily, without anything to support her.
"You have given me a dreadful fright, Mary," says I, sitting down by her in the chair, and beginning by this time to feel rather faint after being startled so.
She jumped out of bed to get me a drop of water, and kissed me, and said how sorry she was, and how undeserving of so much interest being taken in her. At the same time, she tried to possess herself of the laudanum bottle which I still kept cuddled up tight in my own hands.
"No," says I. "You have got into a low-spirited, despairing way. I won't trust you with it."
"I am afraid I can't do without it," says Mary, in her usual quiet, hopeless voice. "What with work that I can't get through as I ought, and troubles that I can't help thinking of, sleep won't come to me unless I take a few drops out of that bottle. Don't keep it away from me, Anne; it's the only thing in the world that makes me forget myself."
"Forget yourself!" says I. "You have no right to talk in that way, at your age. There's something horrible in the notion of a girl of eighteen sleeping with a bottle of laudanum by her bedside every night. We all of us have our troubles. Haven't I got mine?"