"Mother, mother, not that!"
"Yes, Griff. The doctor did not say it in so many words, but my eyes are sharp. I never did pay much attention to people's words—especially a doctor's. But I watched his face when he thought I was not looking, and it said, as plain as could be, 'You will die.' So there's an end of it, Griff."
"What do we care about his opinion? Tell yourself you will live, little mother; there's fight in you yet."
"Very little, now. I have done; the doctor only clinched what I felt in myself—otherwise, of course, I should not have believed him."
"Mother, you won't die!" cried Griff, at a loss to meet this quiet acceptance of the inevitable. It seemed so foreign to all the sick woman's characteristics.
She looked at him with a whimsical, half-pathetic smile. "Don't try to fool me, Griff; you should know how I hate it. Do you think I am afraid?"
He made no answer, only pressed her hands a little closer in his own. After a long silence she spoke again, in a soft, measured voice.
"I think people make far too much of dying, and the dread of facing the Unknown. I am sorry to leave you, and I would stay if any effort could keep me here; but I fear nothing. Perhaps I hope more than my life has given me any right to do. I never understood religion, Griff, and I went my own way through everything, and I believe I have been a very selfish, bad old woman."
"Mother——"
"Boy, I never would have you flatter me, and I don't mean to now. How did you find Kate?"