She looked back in closing the door, to see the quiet face that lay so patiently on the pillow, to see the stillness of the folded hands, to see the last, rare smile.
She wondered, half guessing the truth, if she should ever see it again. She never did.
They were all wondering what had become of her, when she came into the house.
"We start in half an hour, Joyce, my dear," said her father, catching her up in his arms for a kiss;—he almost always kissed her now when she had been fifteen minutes out of his sight,—"We start in half an hour, and you won't have any more than time to eat your lunch."
Mrs. Breynton had spread one of her very very best lunches on the dining-room table, and Joy's chair was ready and waiting for her, and everybody stood around, in that way people will stand, when a guest is going away, not knowing exactly what to do or what to say, but looking very sober. And very sober they felt; they had all learned to love Joy in this year she had spent among them, and it was dreary enough to see her trunks packed and strapped in the entry, and her closet shelves upstairs empty, and all little traces of her about the house vanishing fast.
"Come along," said Gypsy in a savage undertone, "Come and eat, and let the rest stay out here. I've hardly set eyes on you all the morning. I must have you all myself now."
"Oh hum!" said Joy, attempting a currant tart, and throwing it down with one little semi-circular bite in it. "So I'm really off, and this is the very last time I shall sit at this table."
"Hush up, if you please!" observed Gypsy, winking hard, "just eat your tart."
Joy cut off a delicate mouthful of the cold tongue, and then began to look around the room.
"The last time I shall see Winnie's blocks, and that little patch of sunshine on the machine, and the big Bible on the book-case!—Oh, how I shall think about them all nights, when I'm sitting down by the grate at home."