"If you want the real truth," said the doctor, "she has had too much east wind and too much hard work. The children of this generation are not going to stand what their mothers did. A bad cold or two next winter will finish her, but with care and no undue exposure she may live several years. But she will never reach the three score and ten that every human being has a right to."
Uncle Winthrop sent the carriage around every day to the Leveretts'. They had given up theirs before Mr. Leverett's death. He and Doris took their morning horseback rides and scoured the beautiful country places for miles around, until Doris knew every magnificent tree or unusual shrub or queer old house and its history. These hours were a great delight to him.
Elizabeth had often gone down to Salem town, but her time was so brief and there was so much to do that she "couldn't bother." And she wondered how Doris knew about the shops in Essex Street and Federal Street and Miss Rust's pretty millinery show, and Mr. John Innes' delicate French rolls and braided bread, and Molly Saunders' gingerbread that the school children devoured, and the old Forrester House with its legends and fine old pictures and the lovely gardens, the wharves with their idle fleets that dared not put out to sea for fear of being swallowed up by the enemy.
Uncle Winthrop had taken her several times when some business had called him thither. But, truth to tell, she had never cared to repeat her visit to Mrs. Manning's.
The piano was like a bit of heaven, Elizabeth thought, the first time she came over to visit Doris.
"Oh," she said, with a long sigh, pressing her hand on her heart, for the deep breaths always hurt her, "if I was only prepared to go to heaven I shouldn't want to stay here a day longer. When they sing about 'eternal rest' it seems such a lovely thing, and to 'lay your burdens down.' But then there's 'the terrors of the law,' and the 'judgments to come,' and the great searching of the hearts and reins—do you know just what the reins are?"
No, Doris didn't. Heaven had always seemed a lovely place to her and God like a father, only grander and tenderer than any human father could be.
Then they talked about praying, and it came out that Doris said her mother's prayers still in French and her father's in English.
"Oh," exclaimed Elizabeth, horrified, "I shouldn't dare to pray to God in French—it would seem like a mockery. And 'Now I lay me down to sleep' is just a baby prayer, and really isn't pouring out your own soul to God."
Doris asked Uncle Winthrop about it.