“Whew! It’s a reg’lar blizzard,” he began, but he stopped short at the expression on his wife’s face. “Why, Ella!” he cried.
“Jim--Aunt Abby sat up ten minutes in bed ter-day. She called fer toast an’ tea.”
Jim dropped into a chair. His jaw fell open.
“S-sat up!” he stammered.
“Yes.”
“But she--hang it all, Herrick’s comin’ ter-morrer with the coffin!”
“Oh, Jim!”
“Well, I can’t help it! You know how she was this mornin’,” retorted Jim sharply. “I thought she was dead once. Why, I ’most had Herrick come back with me ter-night, I was so sure.”
“I know it,” shivered Ella, “but you hadn’t been gone an hour ’fore she began to stir an’ notice things. I found her lookin’ at me first, an’ it give me such a turn I ’most dropped the medicine bottle in my hand. I was clearin’ off the little table by her bed, an’ she was followin’ me around with them big gray eyes. ‘Slickin’ up?’ she asks after a minute; an’ I could ‘a’ dropped right there an’ then, ’cause I was slickin’ up, fer her fun’ral. ‘Where’s Jim?’ she asks then. ’Gone ter town,’ says I, kind o’ faint-like. ‘Umph!’ she says, an’ snaps her lips tight shet. After a minute she opens ’em again. ’I think I’ll have some tea and toast,’ she says, casual-like, jest as if she’d been callin’ fer victuals ev’ry day fer a month past. An’ when I brought it, if she didn’t drag herself up in bed an’ call fer a piller to her back, so’s she could set up. An’ there she stayed, pantin’ an’ gaspin’, but settin’ up--an’ she stayed there till the toast an’ tea was gone.”
“Gosh!” groaned Jim. “Who’d ‘a’ thought it? ’Course ’t ain’t that I grudge the old lady’s livin’,” he added hurriedly, “but jest now it’s so-- unhandy, things bein’ as they be. We can’t very well--” He stopped, a swift change coming to his face. “Say, Ella,” he cried, “mebbe it’s jest a spurt ’fore--’fore the last. Don’t it happen sometimes that way--when folks is dyin’?”