Grace believed that she was tired, and so refrained from asking her any questions. But after Mrs. Smith had gone home and the children had all been put to bed, Bertha plunged into the story of her trouble, and told Grace all that she had not been able to tell the doctor, of how Eunice had asked her to be kind to the brother so that the sister might die in peace. And then Grace did what the doctor had done, she laughed and laughed until Bertha began to feel afraid that she would do herself an injury.
“I can’t see anything very funny in it myself, but that is because I lack a sense of humour, perhaps,” Bertha remarked, almost disposed to feel affronted at having provoked so much mirth.
“Oh, my dear child, do forgive me!” cried Grace. “It is too bad to make fun of you. But the fancy picture of you attempting to console that dreadful Mr. Long for the loss of his sister was too much for me. Eunice must have been a little delirious, poor dear, or she would never have suggested such a thing.”
“Then you don’t think that it was wicked of me to refuse to make her happy, to let her die in peace?” said Bertha, drawing a long breath of relief, for it had been a real trial to her to refuse Eunice anything, and the pinched white face of the sick woman haunted her still.
“Why should you throw your life away at the whim of a sick woman who doubtless does not know what she wants?” said Grace, her voice unconsciously stern. “Do you know, I have been so afraid of asking rash things myself that one day, when I was fairly capable of knowing what I was about, I got Tom to draw up a sort of statement, in which I besought my friends to take no notice of silly favours which I might ask when body and mind were alike under the influence of sickness.”
“But you have never asked for impossibilities,” said Bertha.
“And I trust that I never shall. But I am thankful to hear you speak of it as an impossibility, Bertha; for I should never have forgiven myself, nor have been able to look Anne or Hilda in the face again, if that sort of settlement had been possible to you. Oh dear! oh dear! I think that poor Eunice must have been mad!” cried Grace.
“Well, it is settled once and for all, and there is no more need for you to think about it,” Bertha replied soothingly, and then, in spite of herself, she found her thoughts back again with that stranger who had sat so helplessly in his boat, while she swam out to his rescue, and she wondered anew whether he would ever cross her path again, then grew angry with herself because her thoughts would wander so persistently in that direction.
CHAPTER XXI
Out of the Silence
The new year was only a week old when there came a blizzard of such violence that for three days it could not be said to be light at all, and during all those hours it never ceased snowing. The little household at Duck Flats was entirely isolated, of course, and it would have gone hard with them in the matter of food if it had not been for the cow.