"You would," she said, "have a wonderful opportunity of
showing what is in you, and if you really succeed, you might make at
least one mother happy." But Claudia put the idea aside with scorn.
Another said it all came of being surrounded with comfort, and that if
Claudia had been poorer, she would have been troubled with no such
yearnings; the actual anxieties of life would have filled the vacuum.
That, too, brought a cloud over their friendship. And the problem
remained unsolved.
Mr. Haberton, immersed in affairs, had little time to consider his
daughter's whims. Mrs. Haberton, long an invalid, was too much occupied
in battling with her own ailments, and bearing the pain which was her
daily lot, to feel acute sympathy with Claudia's woes.
"My dear," she said one day, when her daughter had been more than
commonly eloquent upon the want of purpose in her life, "why don't you
think of some occupation?"
"But what occupation?" said Claudia. "Here I am at home, with everything
around me, and no wants to supply----"
"That is something," put in Mrs. Haberton.
"Oh, yes, people always tell you that; but after all, wouldn't it be
better to have life to face, and to----"
"Poor dear!" said Mrs. Haberton, stroking her daughter's cheek with a
thin hand.
"Please don't, mamma," said Claudia; "you know how I dislike being
petted like a child."
"My dear," said Mrs. Haberton, "I feel my pain again; do give me my
medicine.
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