CHAPTER III.
Miss Luella Bailey was not elected. The unenlightened prejudice of man
to prefer one of his own sex, combined with the hostility of the Reform
Club, procured her defeat, notwithstanding that the rest of her ticket
triumphed at the polls. There was some consolation for her friends in
the fact that her rival, Miss Snow, had a considerably smaller number of
votes than she. Selma solaced herself by the reflection that, as she had
been consulted only at the twelfth hour, she was not responsible for the
result, but she felt nerved by the defeat to concentrate her energies
against the proposed bill for an appointed school board.
Her immediate attention and sympathy were suddenly invoked by the
illness of Mr. Parsons, who had seemed lacking in physical vigor for
some weeks, and whose symptoms culminated in a slight paralysis, which
confined him to his bed for a month, and to his house during the
remainder of the autumn. Selma rejoiced in this opportunity to develop
her capacities as a nurse, to prove how adequate she would have been to
take complete charge of her late husband, had Dr. Page chosen to trust
her. She administered with scrupulous regularity to the invalid such
medicines as were ordered, and kept him cheerful by reading and
conversation, so that the physician in charge complimented her on her
proficiency.
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