“Oh, Miss Arran have you watched all night? How good you are!”
“I had several naps. Your mother was very quiet. She seems better. Mrs. Dane is coming in and you must get some breakfast. Then if we need a nurse—”
“Oh, no, do not have one. My place is here. Oh, Miss Arran,” and Lilian turned deadly pale, “you heard what she said last evening. It can’t be true. Would any one ever work and make sacrifices for a child not her own? She is my mother.”
Miss Arran nodded. “Unless she is much worse I do not think we will need a nurse. There will be so little to do in the house that I shall be quite at liberty.”
“Yes, Mrs. Boyd was much stronger,” the doctor admitted, though the case was not much more hopeful. A second stroke might end it all. “But she seems to have something on her mind. Is it anxiety about her daughter?”
“I have assured her that Lilian will be my charge. She has the making of an unusually fine scholar, and she is a high minded, honorable girl, sincere and ambitious.”
“The daughter has taken from somewhere a much stronger physical and mental equipment. What of the father?”
“Oh, he died when she was a mere infant.”
The embargo had been removed from Lilian and Mrs. Dane treated her with a sort of tolerant sympathy. She roamed about the deserted library and chose some books, a few girls waylaid her in the school room. Miss Nevins made an importunate appeal, quite forgetting her past disdain.
“Oh, why can’t you stay down here?” she cried. “It’s awful dull, and there’s no fun going on. Miss Graniss is going to take us down town when the stores are lighted up, but it’s so long to wait until evening.”