"Woman," she cried, "I'm homesick. Can't ye understand that, even ef you ain't got a home an' a husband ye been neglectin' fer days, like I have? I'm homesick." Patiently she brought out her refrain again. "The man looked jest like Jim," she ended.
She turned away, and with feverish haste put her case on a chair, and her jacket and hat on the case, topping the collection with an old pair of driving-gloves. The completeness of this preparation seemed to give her some satisfaction. She continued with more animation.
"I'm startin' early," she explained. "I told the hotel man soon's I come in to have me called at five o'clock. So I'll say good-by now. An' thank ye both fer all yer kindness," she ended, primly.
Dr. Harland laughed. Then, impulsively, she took both the woman's toil-hardened hands in hers.
"Good-by, then, and God bless you," she said. "My cure has worked. I'll comfort myself with that knowledge."
For a moment the eyes of Tildy Mears fell.
"You ben mighty good," she said. "You both ben good. Don't think I ain't grateful." She hesitated, then went on in halting explanation. "'S long's you ain't married," she said, "an' ain't got nothin' else to do, it's fine to travel round an' talk to folks. But someway sence I see that man to-night, settin' there lookin' like Jim, I realize things is different with us married women."
She drew her small figure erect, her voice taking on an odd suggestion of its ringing platform note.
"Talkin' is one thing," she said, tersely, "livin' is another thing. P'rhaps you ain't never thought of that. But I see the truth now, an' I see it clear."
Her peroration filled the little room, and like a swelling organ tone rolled through the open door and down the stairs, where it reached the far recesses of the hall below. Her lean right arm shot upward in her one characteristic gesture, as if she called on high Heaven itself to bear witness to the wisdom of her words in this, her last official utterance.