“Better, Juliana, better.”
“She always thinks herself better,” she would say to herself. “But the senhora has been restless,” she would say aloud, vexed at the improvement.
“No,” the patient would sigh; “I have slept well.”
“That is not sleeping; I heard you groaning; you have been moaning all night.”
She wished to persuade herself that the patient was worse,—that the improvement in her condition was only temporary, and that the old woman would soon die. Every morning she followed Dr. Pinto to the door, with her arms folded, and a long face.
“Is there no hope, Doctor?”
“It is a matter of days.”
She wanted to know how many days,—two days? five days?
“We cannot say, Juliana,” the old man would answer, settling his spectacles on his nose; “a few days,—seven or eight.”
Eight days! And as her good fortune drew near, she already began to fix her eyes on three pairs of boots in the window of Manoel Lourenço.