“All this is well enough, but, mother! mother! what is there to hide from me? Speak with a straight tongue. Where is Nanna?”
Then Barbara said plainly, “Nanna is dead.”
With a cry of amazed anguish David leaped to his feet, instinctively covering his ears with his hands, for he could not bear such words to enter them. “Dead!” he whispered; and Barbara saw him reeling and swaying like a tottering pillar. She pushed a chair toward him, and was thankful that he had strength left to take its support. But she made no outcry, and called in none of the neighbors. Quietly she stood a little way off, while David, in a death-like silence, fought away the swooning, drowning wave which was making his heart stand still and his limbs fail him. For she knew the nature of the suffering man–knew that when he came to himself there would be none but God could intermeddle in his heart’s bitterness and loss.
After a sharp struggle David opened his eyes, and Barbara gave him a drink of cold water; but she offered neither advice nor consolation. Only when David said, “I am sick, mother, and I will go to my room and lie down on my bed,” she answered:
“My dear lad, that is the right way. Sleep, if sleep you can.”
About sunsetting David asked Barbara for food; and as she prepared it he sat by the open window, silent and stupefied, dominated by the somber inertia of hopeless sorrow. When he began to eat, Barbara took from a china jar two papers, and gave them to him.
“I promised Nanna to put them into your hands,” she said.
ON THE WAY TO NANNA’S COTTAGE.