Somehow, now, Renée did not feel a bit like asking to go home. She was not even very much afraid. With Mrs. Lee she stepped softly down the dim hall toward the closed door.
"Anything, Renée, that will make her forget herself will help her," whispered Mrs. Lee. "Tell her about Keineth's party--anything!" They walked into the room. The doctor had raised one of the cracked shades so that the sun was slanting in. Mrs. Lee had put some extra pillows under the patient's head; she was half-sitting, a pathetically little figure in the great ugly bed. Her face was turned toward the wall. She lay perfectly still; Renée might have thought that, like her mother, she was sleeping, except that her thin fingers twitched at the edge of the bedspread.
"I have brought Renée," Mrs. Lee said softly.
There was no answer.
"Perhaps you would like to have her stay with you for a little while!"
"Oh--go away--all of you!" came pettishly. "Can't you let an old woman die in peace? Will it ever come?" she moaned into her pillow.
Renée felt so indignant that anyone should be praying like this to die that she stepped to the side of the bed.
"But the doctor says you are not going to die," she answered quickly, with a stubborn note in her sweet voice.
The moment she had spoken she was very frightened but she could not have said anything that would have so quickly roused the old lady. It roused her because it angered her; she jerked her head around. However, what she might have retorted in answer was checked by her utter amazement at seeing the strange, quaint little figure by her bedside.
"Who are you?" she demanded angrily. "Who let you in here?"