“Well, I haven’t known a well day for years,” said the invalid. “Here I lie, racked with pain, and I declare I don’t know whether it’s one day or another.”
Annie Laurie felt herself bracing against this discouraged tone.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose you really have to worry about what day it is. You have nothing to do—no Monday washing to think of, or Saturday baking. Some one else does all that for you.”
She spoke merely to present a cheerful side, but Mrs. Disbrow flushed a trifle. Annie Laurie saw that she had said something that annoyed her.
“Yes,” the sick woman replied still more dejectedly, “I’m nothing but a drag on my family. I often say to them that it would be better if I was out of their way.”
“I don’t suppose that makes them very happy—hearing you say that.” Annie Laurie replied in her hearty way. It really seemed to her as if that was the unkindest thing a mother could say to her children. “If only I could have my mother, sick or well, or any way at all, I’d be the happiest girl in the world. It’s terribly lonely being without a mother—or a father,” she added almost in a whisper.
Mrs. Disbrow reached out her hand and laid it on Annie Laurie’s.
“Poor girl,” she murmured with what was almost her first thought of anyone save herself, that winter.
“And—Oh, I feel so sorry for Sam and Hannah, with you ill always,” went on Annie Laurie. “Of course it spoils their happiness. It seems such a pity! Isn’t there anything that can be done, Mrs. Disbrow? Doesn’t any doctor know how to cure you? Haven’t you any idea yourself of what ought to be done?”
“Well, my husband talks of going West soon,” answered Mrs. Disbrow with something like vivacity—or rather, like a shadow of it. “I’m looking forward to that. If we could get to a new place and to a new house, and if there was something to look forward to, and hope for the children to make something of themselves, I don’t know—maybe—” her voice trailed off and her eyes fixed themselves in an aimless reverie on the opposite wall.