“Well, to-day’s Thursday, and there’s Friday. We’ll see about it. I’d like you to stay in bed and be pretty quiet—not worry—”
“I ain’t got nothin’ to worry ’bout,” with her soft little laugh. “It’s all come round right, an’ what I wanted to know most of all, I c’n know on Sat’day. I kin look out o’ the winder and see the trees ’n’ the sunshine, an’ hear the birds sing. An’ everybody speaks so sweet an’ soft to you, like ’s if their voices was makin’ music. O no, I don’t mind, only the children’ll want Miss Deerin’, and I want her too.”
“Your want is the most needful. She shall stay with you.”
The brown quartz eyes irradiated with luminous gleams.
“Very well,” he said, with an answering smile.
Miss Deering came out in the hall. He shut the door carefully.
“If she wants anything or anybody, let her have it. Keep her generally quiet, and in bed. Though nothing can hurt her very much. It is too late to help or hinder.”
“O surely you do not mean”—Miss Deering turned white to the very lips.
“She’s as much worn out as a woman of eighty ought to be. If you could look at her, through her, with the eye of science, you would wonder how the machinery keeps going. It is worn to the last thread, and her poor little heart can hardly do its work. Her cheerfulness is in her favor. But some moment all will stop. There will be little suffering; it is old age, the utter lack of vitality. And she’s hardly a dozen years old.”
“She is fifteen—yes, I think she is right, though I could hardly believe it at first.”