Jack scarcely left her. She liked to open her eyes, and find him sitting there, when she would smile faintly, and murmur a few words. Sylvie and Miss Barry were the only visitors admitted to her room. They used to read out of "Pilgrim's Progress," the book she had loved so well, and occasionally they sang some sweet old hymn.
"Jack," she said once, "you will find everything in my old box there in the bureau. It was my mother's, and came across the sea with me. You have been a good lad. You took your father's place with me, and you must never regret that you staid here to make an old woman happy. You have been a good lad—a good—little lad"— And her mind wandered to other years.
Just growing gradually weaker, and falling asleep peacefully. A long, well-spent life, and a death to remember and desire.
They buried her in Yerbury churchyard, and the townspeople turned out to do her honor. Jack thought of another death, and the almost solitary state of the funeral.
How good it was that they had Jane Morgan now! She carried them right along.
Jack opened the brass-bound box, still fragrant with its sandal-wood lining. Some old letters, the trinkets she had saved from her poverty, and a will bequeathing her all, in government bonds, to Jack.
There was nearly seven thousand dollars. With his own little savings he felt quite rich.
"Jack," said his mother, "all these years you have waited patiently, and put by your own dreams. Do not think that I did not notice the struggle. It was very generous and kindly; and I am glad, for grandmother's sake, that you staid. But now if you like we will go somewhere else, and make a new home"—did her voice tremble a little then? "I am still young enough to take root elsewhere, and cousin Jane is so energetic she helps one to new life. There may be prettier and more prosperous places, and you have years before you in which to realize a fortune."
He glanced up at the face bending over him, instinct with the honorable grace of middle life; the hair with a few threads of silver; the soft, fine skin showing some wrinkles about the eyes and two or three light creases across the forehead; the cheeks out of which roundness had vanished, and the lips the scarlet of girlhood, but though both were pale the mouth was still tender and sweet. A womanly woman,—that seemed to him a perfect description of his mother, a woman who had loved three generations, and held by them. Now for his sake she would give up the old ties, and try a new world,—this shy, shrinking, loving woman.
What would she leave? She had never known any other home in her married life, though this had been changed and improved since her wedding-day. Everywhere some trace of his father. The porch with the roses climbing over it, the great maples in the street, planted by him; the odorous old balm of Gilead, that he had hunted up because she had cared for it, and they had one in her old home; the trailing clematis with its shining smilax-like green, and its heliotrope fragrance; the white rose that had been planted on the morning of Jack's birth, and had sent up many generations from the old root; the latticed summer-house with its wealth of grapes; and almost like a vision Jack could fancy he saw the tall figure and deliberate step,—the sweet ghost of memory that could never walk in any other place. Did his mother have such dreams?