She gave her a quick little kiss, and followed the doctor upstairs. Helen went back into the study.
“Something has happened,” she said. “I had no time to speak to Dr. Thaxter. They will send for us, dear. I think—I think that is what nurse meant.”
It was now about seven of the morning, and the sun about an hour above the horizon streamed gloriously into the room. It shone on the table, the sofa, on the big chair where Helen and Martin as little children used to sit together, looking at Bible pictures. And she sat down in that chair now. The big things had been said between her father and her, and as they waited now both turned to little memories of the past.
“Martin used to sit by me,” she said.
“Yes; and then you grew too big. After that you used each to have a chair, one on each side of me.”
“And we did our lessons there,” said Helen. Then she stopped suddenly, for there was a foot on the stairs.
Nurse Baker came in.
“You must both come,” she said.
The blind was drawn up in Martin’s room, and the same wonderful sun flooded the room, and outside many thrushes were singing. There was but little apparatus of medicine there,—it was just a boy’s clean room: cricket bats and racquets stood in one corner, on the table there was a heap of music, school-books were in the bookcase by the door. And on the bed lay Martin. His eyes were still open, but they were blind and unseeing no more, and he turned them wearily to the door when Helen and his father entered. But when he saw them, they brightened a little. The doctor had stood back from the bed, Nurse Baker was by him. Then Martin spoke.
“It is nice to be in my own room again,” he said in a voice just audible. “Oh, good-morning, Helen; good-morning, father. I have had horrible dreams, father. I dreamed you were angry with me. How silly. You are not angry?”