“Doctor, you must tell me. I must know.”
Again the man hesitated. He noted the flushed cheeks and shaking hands of the woman before him. It was true, she must know; and perhaps, after all, it was best she should know through him. He drew a long breath and plunged straight into the heart of the story.
Five minutes later a glad voice came from the doorway.
“Mother, dearest--then you’re awake!” The doctor was conscious of a low-breathed “Hush, don’t tell her!” in his ears; then, to his amazement, he saw the woman on the bed turn her head and hold out her hand with the old groping uncertainty of the blind.
“Margaret! It is Margaret, isn’t it?”
Days afterward, when the weary, pain-racked body of the little mother was forever at rest, Margaret lifted her head from her lover’s shoulder, where she had been sobbing out her grief.
“Ned, I can’t be thankful enough,” she cried, “that we kept it from Mother to the end. It’s my only comfort. She didn’t know.”
“And I’m sure she would wish that thought to be a comfort to you, dear,” said the doctor gently. “I am sure she would.”
Phineas and the Motor Car
Phineas used to wonder, sometimes, just when it was that he began to court Diantha Bowman, the rosy-cheeked, golden-haired idol of his boyhood. Diantha’s cheeks were not rosy now, and her hair was more silver than gold, but she was not yet his wife.