But after all, thought Forbes, Jack was the youngest of the three, and could not perhaps be expected to feel his mother's death so deeply as he and Geoffrey did; neither could Dodie (Muriel was her real name) who lay fast asleep, happily unconscious that the little black frock that hung at the end of her crib, about which she had been so excited as she had watched Nurse making it up, was the sign of something most precious having gone out of her life. Ashamed of himself and full of remorse Forbes rose from the table and took a seat opposite his brother.
A silence followed, during which he surveyed drearily the old familiar room. It looked the same as ever, yet it felt empty. Even the sky out of the window looked further off—the world seemed wider—the home too large.
"Geoff!" he said, with a choke in his voice, "I can't believe it!" Geoffrey did not answer.
"I can't believe that that is Mother," he added in an awestruck whisper, signing with his head towards the next room.
"It isn't Mother," said Geoffrey, still staring at the red coals, with knit brows, as he passed his hand through his shaggy red hair. "Do you think if it was Mother," he added in a low earnest voice, "that Dodie would have been frightened at her, and would have cried? She knew quite well that that isn't Mother. I couldn't bear it, if it was. If," continued Geoffrey looking up now at his brother with sad eyes, "If she had looked—as she always looks—when she says good-bye, I couldn't have borne it."
Geoffrey did not cry, it was not his way, but he spoke slowly and with a desperate effort to control himself.
"I'm glad she's changed," he added after a moment's pause, "for now I know that she is with God in heaven."
"And do you think—are you quite sure Mother would like Dodie to wear a black frock?"
Nurse's familiar step was heard now on the staircase, and at the same moment Dodie began to wake. She sat up in her crib, rubbing her knuckles into her eyes, her pretty curls disordered, and her little face flushed with sleep.