What she was musing about was that child that hadn't lived. I could tell that by her face. I could tell how she must have thought of it, often and often, fur years and years, and longed fur it, so that it seemed to her at times she could almost touch it. And how good a mother she would of been to it. Some women has jest natcherally GOT to mother something or other. Miss Lucy was one of that kind. I knowed all in a flash, whilst I looked at her there, why she had adopted Martha fur her child.
It was a wonderful look that was onto her face. And it was a wonderful face that look was onto. I felt like I had knowed her forever when I seen her there. Like the thoughts of her the doctor had been carrying around with him fur years and years, and that I had caught him thinking oncet or twicet, had been my thoughts too, all my life.
Miss Lucy, she was one of the kind there's no use trying to describe. The feller that could see her that-a-way and not feel made good by it orter have a whaling. Not the kind of sticky, good feeling that makes you uncomfortable, like being pestered by your conscience to jine a church or quit cussing. But the kind of good that makes you forget they is anything on earth but jest braveness of heart and being willing to bear things you can't help. You knowed the world had hurt her a lot when you seen her standing there; but you didn't have the nerve to pity her none, either. Fur you could see she had got over pitying herself. Even when she was in that muse, longing with all her soul fur that child she had never knowed, you didn't have the nerve to pity her none.
"He died," she says agin, purty soon, with that gentle kind of smile.
Colonel Tom, he clears his throat agin. Like when you are awful dry.
"The truth is—" he begins.
And then he breaks off agin. Miss Lucy turns toward him when he speaks. By the strange look that come onto her face there must of been something right curious in HIS manner too. I was jest simply laying onto my forehead mashing one of my dern eyeballs through a little hole in the grating. But I couldn't, even that way, see fur enough to one side to see how HE looked.
"The truth is," says Colonel Tom, trying it agin, "that I—well, Lucy, the child may be dead, but he didn't die when you thought he did."
There was a flash of hope flared into her face that I hated to see come there. Because when it died out in a minute, as I expected it would have to, it looked to me like it might take all her life out with it. Her lips parted like she was going to say something with them. But she didn't. She jest looked it.
"Why did you never tell me this—that there was a child?" says the doctor, very eager.