"Kiss me, Lennie," said Gran grimly: exactly like Nelson.
Lennie shrank away. Then, yielding to his mother's pressure he laid his dark, smooth head and his brown face on the pillow next to Gran's face, but he did not kiss her.
"There's my precious!" said Gran softly, with all the soft, cajoling gentleness that had made her so lovely, at moments, to her men.
"Alice, you've been good to my Jacob," she said, as if remembering something. "There's the stocking. It's for you and Lennie." She still managed to say the last words with a caress, though she was fading from consciousness again.
Lennie drew away and hid behind his mother. Gran lay still, exactly as if dead. But the laces of her eternal cap still stirred softly, to show she breathed. The silence was almost unbearable.
To break it, the Methodist son-in-law sank to his knees, the others followed his example, and he prayed in a low, solemn, extinguished voice. When he had said Amen the others whispered it and rose from their knees. And by one consent they glided from the room. They had had enough deathbed for the moment.
Mary closed the inner door when they had gone, and remained alone in the room with Gran.
V
The sons-in-law all melted through the parlour and out on to the verandah, where they helped themselves from the decanter on the table, filling up from the canvas water-bag that swung in the draught to keep cool. The daughters sat down by the table and wept, lugubriously and rather angrily. The sons-in-law drank and looked afflicted. Jack remained on duty in the parlour, though he would dearly have liked to decamp.
But he was now interested in the relations. They began to weep less, and to talk in low, suppressed, vehement voices. He could only catch bits.—"It's a question if he ever married Tom's mother. I doubt if Tom's legitimate. I don't even doubt it, I'm sure. We've suffered from that before. Where's the stocking? Stocking! Stocking—saved up—bought Easu out. Mother should know better. If she's made a will—Jacob's first marriage—children to educate and provide for. Unmarried daughters—first claim—stocking—" And then quite plainly from Ruth: "It's hard on our husbands if they have to support mother's unmarried daughters." This said with dignity.