He did look at her. She seemed suddenly taller and thinner and grayer and more defiant than any being he had ever beheld.
"Look at me!" she repeated. "I have been given up by the doctors half a dozen times. My mother was told when I was sixteen that I had only a piece of a lung left—that it might last me through the winter. It has served my purpose for half a century since. But I didn't worry about the color of my handkerchiefs, and I didn't admit for a moment that I could possibly be induced to die—that is, of course"—she put on a sudden aspect of resignation that was almost funny—"unless it was the Lord's will."
CHAPTER VIII
Nothing seemed to matter now that her mother was dead. It was plain Val would never be happy again. Leaving her home, to which she was devotedly attached, was hardly a misfortune, any more than going to live with her grandmother. What did anything matter? God hadn't heard her prayers; He had mocked her faith, and she was motherless. She hadn't enough interest in life even to be "owdacious," as her grandmother called it. She was passive, almost "good."
Her father, observing her settled depression on the journey West, gathered her into his arms, and whispered:
"We have each other, you know."
And she lay with her face hidden, and cried a long time, so quietly that her grandmother thought she was asleep.