CHAPTER XII.
TWO MISTAKES.
At the singing-school and at the church August waited as impatiently as possible for some sign of recognition from Julia.

He little knew the fear that beset her.

Having seen her hysterical mother prostrated for weeks by the excitement of a dispute with her father, it seemed to her that if she turned one look of love and longing toward young Wehle, whose sweet German voice rang out above the rest in the hymns, she might kill her mother as quickly as by plunging a knife into her heart.

The steam-doctor, who was the family physician, had warned her and her father separately of the danger of exciting Mrs.Anderson's most excitable temper, and now Julia was the slave of her mother's disease.
That lucky hysteria, which the steam-doctor thought a fearful heart-disease, had given Mrs.Abigail the whip-hand of husband and daughter, and she was not slow to know her advantage, using her heart in a most heartless way.
August could not blame Julia for not writing, for he had tried to break the blockade by a letter sent through Jonas and Cynthy Ann, but the latter had found herself so well watched that the note oppressed her conscience and gave a hangdog look to her face for two weeks before she got it out of her pocket, and then she put it under the pillow of Julia's bed, and had reason to believe that the suspicious Mrs.Anderson confiscated it within five minutes.

For the severity of maternal government was visibly increased thereafter, and Julia received many reminders of her ingratitude and of her determination to kill her self-sacrificing mother by her stubbornness.
"Well," Mrs.Anderson would say, "it's all one to me whether the world comes to an end or not.