"By and by one of the nurses came in very soft and lifted up one of her hands—I had mine over the other. She was a nice girl, that nurse—we both liked her real well. Dr. Stanchon—the old doctor, not the boy, here—brought her, and he said to me, 'Now, Mr. Vail, here's the best nurse in New York: trust her.' And we did. She looked sharp at me, Miss Jessop did, and listened over her heart, then she put her cheek down to the lips.
"'Why, she's gone!' she said. 'Mr. Vail, when did it happen?'
"And then she called the doctor and he said yes, she was gone. That's why I say Mrs. Leeth died."
He looked calmly at me and I found to my surprise that during this story I had grown as calm as he and had quite forgotten, in my sympathy for the little man, just why he had begun to tell it. It was most perplexing. The room had taken on its homely comfort again: the horror had disappeared.
"So I sat there. The doctor said to let me stay, if I felt so. And I just saw my whole life pass right by me like pictures in a book—if you see what I mean. I saw Min when she graduated and Irene playing tunes to her mamma and me on the piano, and the day the new gold furniture came in, and Mrs. Leeth leading me by the hand out of mother's room after I'd sat all day and all night by her....
"And I looked at the face lying so quiet there, and while I looked, it sort of shook—more like when you throw a little pebble into a pond—and the eyes opened. And I knew mother was looking at me. That's all."
Poor, lonely little man! How could I have felt afraid of him? It was not difficult to see how it had been.
"Then she—Mrs. Leeth—had not really died at all, had she?" I said hastily, only to bite my lips at my tactlessness.
But he smiled tolerantly.
"That's what they said," he answered quietly. "It was very interesting, they said. The doctor was pretty hard on Miss Jessop, I thought. But I guess they always lay it off on them.