“So that I can leave something behind me for people to remember me when I’m gone.”
She said it quite cheerfully, quite happily. Her bright eyes glistened like a wink of light in an old brown china tea-pot. She said it, too, in that half-reserved way as though there were more to tell, but she was not allowed even to whisper it.
Of course, there was more to tell! She never would be gone! Not really gone! Every time you thought of her, the light of the other life would start back into her eyes, the wrinkled lips would smile again. She would never be really gone! And this was a hint—just a hint to let me at least, for one, make sure about it.
“Then every night they go to bed,” said I, “and pull the patchwork quilt tight round them——”
“Yes—and every time they throw it off in the morning——” said she.
“They’ll think of you?”
“They’ll think of me,” and she chuckled like a little child to think how clever it was of her.
“Supposing,” said I, suddenly, in a whisper as the thought occurred to me—“supposing you could do without any assistance from your boys——”
“I wish I could,” she said; “p’raps I can.”
“You wait and see,” said I.