"I thought you might want an apple, it's from my family's orchard."
"Has that line ever worked for you?"
|ᵍᶦˡᵇᵉʳᵗ ᵇˡʸᵗʰᵉ ˣ ᵒᶜ|
ˢᵗᵒʳʸ ᵇʸ ᶜᶦᵗʸ_ʷᶦᵗᶜʰ
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Chapter 4
Returning to Avonlea wasn't what Ophelia had wanted, but maybe her aunt was right, it was what she needed. She didn't like to admit it, but they'd both taken Gertrude's death far worse than she could have ever imagined. In fact, this was the first time she had left her house since the funeral.
As it turned out, her sudden sickness at the Barry's house was only the beginning. After barely being able to stand during the funeral in Charlottetown, Ophelia became bed ridden. She refused to eat and began throwing up whatever she attempted to put in her stomach. Her aunt became so worried for her that she brought a full-time nurse to the house to care for her niece.
Adelaide, the nurse, was distraught at the state the girl was in. She was severely underweight for a girl as tall and young as she was and immediately began to force feed Ophelia her meals. Adelaide administered foul tasting medicines and pills to her in an attempt to heal her. She brought a doctor from her old practice and he couldn't seem to find an issue, but he did give Ophelia more horrible tasting tablets to chew before meals to ease her stomach. However, nothing they did changed Ophelia's quickly deteriorating condition.
Eventually, Adelaide came to the conclusion that it was not a matter of illness in her body, it was her mind that wasn't functioning properly. The grief from her aunt's death must have been what had the girl so sick.
With this new found revelation, Josephine switched tactics for Ophelia's medicine. Rather than force vile liquids down her throat, she sat beside her and read her stories from her Aunt Gertrude's books. From Jane Eyre to Pride and Prejudice, and her collections of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. They read a few chapters every night, only stopping when Ophelia had fallen asleep.
Josephine wrote letters to her friends and they traveled from across Canada and America to visit her grief-stricken niece. A few people, sorrowful that they couldn't visit in person, sent letters detailing their stories about her aunt.
When they arrived they told stories about her Aunt's life. From adventures they took together, to watching the blossoming romance between Gertrude and Josephine. And with every story read aloud or told by her aunt's friends, Ophelia became stronger.
Within a few weeks, she could stand up and walk around her room. Although it was not much, it was great progress according to Josephine.
As soon as Ophelia was fit for travel, Josephine decided it would be best for both of them to stay with her brother in Avonlea for a while. Around their house in Charlottetown there was simply too much that reminded them of Gertrude.
And although Ophelia protested, Josephine left Rollings to attend to the house and packed what was necessary for a month at Orchard Slope.
