Georgina called the news up to Richard as she paused at the foot of the Green Stairs on her way to the net-mender’s house.
“Belle sent a note over a little while ago and I’m taking the answer back. Come and go with me.”
Richard, who had been trundling Captain Kidd around on his forefeet in the rôle of wheelbarrow, dropped the dog’s hind legs which he had been using as handles and came jumping down the steps, two at a time to do her bidding.
“Belle’s gone over to take care of things,” Georgina explained, with an important air as they walked along. “There’s a man to help nurse him, but she’ll stay on to the end.” Her tone and words were Tippy’s own as she made this announcement.
“End of what?” asked Richard. “And what’s a stroke?”
Half an hour earlier Georgina could not have answered his question, but she explained now with the air of one who has had a lifetime of experience. It was Mrs. Triplett’s fund she was drawing on, however, and old Jeremy’s. Belle’s note had started them to comparing reminiscences, and out of their conversation Georgina had gathered many gruesome facts.
“You may be going about as well and hearty as usual, and suddenly it’ll strike you to earth like lightning, and it may leave you powerless to move for weeks and sometimes even years. You may know all that’s going on around you but not be able to speak or make a sign. Mr. Potter isn’t as bad as that, but he’s speechless. With him the end may come any time, yet he may linger on for nobody knows how long.”
Richard had often passed the net-mender’s cottage in the machine, and stared in at the old man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door. The fact that he was Emmett’s father and ignorant of the secret which Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and overshadowing as the children approached the house.
Belle, stepping to the front door when she heard the gate click, motioned for them to go around to the back. As they passed an open side window, each looked in, involuntarily attracted by the sight of a bed drawn up close to it. Then they glanced at each other, startled and awed by what they saw, and bumped into each other in their haste to get by as quickly as possible.
On the bed lay a rigid form, stretched out under a white counterpane. All that showed of the face above the bushy whiskers was as waxen looking as if death had already touched it, but the sunken eyes half open, showed that they were still in the mysterious hold of what old Jeremy called a “living death.” It was a sight which neither of them could put out of their minds for days afterward.