“Yes!” the girl answered. She tried in dumb show to convey to Seth that her grandmother was ignorant of his brother’s death.
“Go an’ fetch her in here,” said Mrs. Warren, with more animation in her voice than it had shown before. “I want to see her—to talk with her.”
“But, Granny, you ought’nt to see strangers; you know, the doctor——”
“I guess she ain’t much more of a stranger than this young man you’ve got here. Go an’ fetch her, I say! I won’t hurt her, an’ she won’t hurt me.”
There was nothing for Annie to do, but go into the parlor, and bow shamefacedly to Isabel, and say, with embarrassment in every syllable: “Excuse me for not coming before, but I think my grandmother is dying. She wants very much to see you. Won’t you come, please?”
Isabel had risen to her feet upon Annie’s entrance. To the latter’s surprise and increased confusion she held forth her hand with a friendly gesture. “Yes, I will come with you,” she said, as Annie doubtingly took the proffered hand, and the two women entered the sick-room.
Isabel did not seem to see Seth, who stood at the head of the bed, among the drawn curtains, but walked to the bedside and said softly: “I am Isabel, Mrs. Warren; I am sorry that our first meeting should find you so low.”
“So you’re Albert’s wife, eh?” The old woman eyed her keenly, for what seemed a long time. “I’ve heered tell o’ you. Would you mind gettin’ that candle there, on the mantle-piece, an’ holdin’ it, so’t I kin see yer face?”
Isabel gravely complied with the request, and stood before the invalid again, with the yellow light glowing upon her throat and lower chin and nostrils and full, Madonna-like brows. Her face was at its best with this illumination from below. She would have been a rare beauty close before the footlights.
“Well,” said Mrs. Warren, after a long inspection, “P’raps it’ll sound ridiculous to yeh, but yeh don’t look unlike what I did when I was your age. The farm ain’t had time to tell on yeh yit. But it will! It made me the skeercrow that you see; it’ll do the same for you. When I was a girl, I was a Thayer, the best fam’ly in Norton, Massachusetts. We held our heads high, I kin tell yeh. Why, when I brought my side-saddle here, stitched with silk, ’twas the fust one they’d ever seen in these parts. But I married beneath me, an’ I come up here into York State to live, on this very farm. With us, farmin’ don’t mean a livin’ death. P’raps we don’t hev sech fine big barns ez yeh build here, but our houses are better. We don’t git such good crops, but we pay more heed to education and godly livin’. It’s th’ diff’rence ’twixt folks who b’lieve there’s somethin’ else in life b’sides eatin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ makin’ money, an’ folks that don’t. Well, I left a good home, an’ I come here, an’ here I am. Look at me! Look at Lemuel Fairchild’s wife, Cicely—she was a relation of yours, wasn’t she?—see how the farm made an ole woman o’ her, an’ broke her down, an’ killed her! You’re young, an’ you’re good lookin’ yit, but it’ll break yeh, sure’s yer born. Husban’s on these farms ain’t what they air in the cities, nor even in the country in New England. I’m told your husban’ don’t treat you right.”