But no answer came.
The aunts came running, terror in their faces.
“Paralysis,” said Miss Adnah. “Zillah, call the doctor. Azalea, help me lay him down—yes, on the floor. Open the window. Go get his bed ready, Zillah, after you’ve got the doctor. We and the doctor between us must get him in bed.”
Annie Laurie did all she was told. She couldn’t realize what had happened. Something seemed to be whirling around and around in her brain, and all it said was:
“Isn’t Aunt Adnah wonderful? Isn’t Aunt Adnah wonderful?”
She was indeed a general in times of trouble. Why, once when she was young—but there isn’t time to tell Aunt Adnah’s story now.
There was time for nothing, it seemed. It had come like a lightning-flash. Even the doctor was unable to aid. Simeon Pace lay in his bed, looking at them with tortured eyes. It seemed to Annie Laurie that he was trying to make her understand something—with all his vanishing power he was trying to give her some important piece of information. She put her ear to his lips; she listened with the very ears of her soul; but the thing he wished her to know went into silence with him. A dread convulsion brought the end.
Annie Laurie, standing aghast, knew she was fatherless as well as motherless. Yet it couldn’t be! Why, only a little while before everything had been well. Had been well! That reminded her of the signal they were to send—the signal that was to remind each member of the Girl’s Triple Alliance that they had not forgotten each other. And they had agreed not to send the “bad” message unless something very terrible happened. They had laughed about it! And now the terrible thing really had happened. Or had it? Was it, perhaps, only a frightful dream? But no, it was true—and her heart ached so! If only the girls knew! Well, she would tell them. She sat near the clock, watching it. Perhaps when she let the girls know, her throat wouldn’t ache so with that new, strange, crushing pain. Perhaps her eyeballs would cease burning. How busy it seemed around the house! People were coming and going. They stopped to speak to her, and she found herself saying mechanically:
“Yes, I know. You are very kind. To-morrow I’ll understand better. Thank you—to-morrow.”