“He will come, Joyce,” she would say; “he will surely come.”
And somehow it came to be an understood thing that he was to come in the afternoon when they were all ready for him—when Joyce had clad her pretty young form in a dark dress, and when the old lady was up and seated in her chair by the fire in winter, by the door in summer. They had never imagined his arrival at another time. It would not be quite the same should he make a mistake and come in the morning, before Joyce had got the house put right.
Yet, he never came. A greater infirmity came instead, and at last Joyce suggested that her mother should not get up in bad weather. They both knew what this meant, but the episode passed as others do, and Mrs. Leach was bedridden. Still she said—
“He will come, Joyce! He will surely come.”
And the girl would go to the window and draw aside the curtain, looking down the quiet country road towards the village.
“Yes, mother, he will come!” was her usual answer; and one day she gave a little exclamation of surprise and almost of fear.
“Mother,” she exclaimed, “there is some one coming along the road.”
The old lady was already sitting up in bed, staring with her sightless orbs towards the window.
Thus they waited. The man stopped opposite the cottage, and the two women heard the latch of the gate. Then Joyce, turning, saw that her mother had fainted. But it was only momentary. By the time she reached the bed her mother had recovered consciousness.
“Go,” said the old lady, breathlessly; “go and let him in yourself.”