Mrs. Russelthorpe came in one day, and stood by the bedside.
Mr. Deane turned his head away from her, as if her presence reminded him of something he preferred to forget; then, apparently with some effort, he recalled his thoughts.
"You must make friends with your aunt, little Meg. We must bury old grudges before—what is it?—before the sun goes down. It is going down fast!"
Meg held out her hand across the bed—for his sake she would have made friends with any one; but Mrs. Russelthorpe shook her head. "There is no need for us to go through that farce; for his thoughts have wandered again."
"Aunt Russelthorpe," said Meg, "let us both watch by him now; we both care for him—there is room for us both."
"No!" said her aunt. "There is room for only one of us two, Margaret; and he has chosen. Let us have no pretences. Stay where you are. You have won!" and Meg stayed.
She used to read to him by the hour, because he loved the sound of her voice, going on and on in the low monotonous key that soothed him. It was doubtful whether he ever followed the sense of what she read, and, as a matter of fact, Meg, though she would sit half the day with her hand in his and her head bent over a book, would have been puzzled if called on to give an account of what her tongue had been mechanically repeating.
The atmosphere was so peaceful that it seemed as if Time himself stood still for a space with folded wings. "You are keeping so close to me, little Meg," her father said once with a dreamy smile,—"so close, that if you don't take care, when I go through the great gates, you will slip in too by mistake."
Meg pressed closer to him still; and yet, for all her clinging, she knew that there was a life's experience, even now, between him and her.
A thick velvet curtain, curiously embroidered in gold silks, hung across the door. It shut out the whole of the outside world for five days.