She knocked at my door just now, after I had written the last sentence, and had put away the book for the night. Thinking that it was Phœbe, I called, “Come in,” and did not turn. She had come to the bureau where I stood unbraiding my hair, and touched my arm, before I saw who it was. She had on a crimson dressing-gown of warm flannel, and her hair hung down on her shoulders. Although so gray, her hair is massive yet, and coils finely when she is dressed.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I thought you would not be in bed, and I came in to say,—let me sit somewhere else at the breakfast-table, if you like. I saw that I had taken ‘the vacant place.’ Good night, my dear.”
It was such a little thing! I wonder how many people would have noticed it or taken the trouble to speak of it. The quick perception, the unusual delicacy,—these too are like Roy.
I almost wish that she had stayed a little longer. I almost think that I could bear to have her speak to me about him.
Faith, in the next room, seems to have wakened from a frightened dream, and I can hear their voices through the wall. Her mother is soothing and singing to her in the broken words of some old lullaby with which Phœbe used to sing Roy and me to sleep, years and years ago. The unfamiliar, home-like sound is pleasant in the silent house. Phœbe, on her way to bed, is stopping on the garret-stairs to listen to it. Even the cat comes mewing up to the door, and purring as I have not heard the creature purr since the old Sunday-night singing, hushed so long ago.
V.
May 7.
I was awakened and nearly smothered this morning by a pillow thrown directly at my head.
Somewhat unaccustomed, in the respectable, old maid’s life that I lead, to such a pleasant little method of salutation, I jerked myself upright, and stared. There stood Faith in her night-dress, laughing as if she would suffocate, and her mother in search of her was just knocking at the open door.
“She insisted on going to wake Cousin Mary, and wouldn’t be washed till I let her; but I stipulated that she should kiss you softly on both your eyes.”