“Doris, honest and truly, do you think Dad’s getting any better?” she asked in a low voice.
Doris hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging even to herself the possibility of his not improving.
“He eats better now, and he can sit up.”
“But he looks awful. I get goose pimples when I look at him sometimes. His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land we couldn’t see.”
“Jean Craig, how can you say that?”
“Hush, don’t let Mother hear,” cautioned Jean anxiously. “I had to tell somebody. I think of it all the time.”
“Well, don’t think of it. That’s like sticking pins in a wax statue back in the Middle Ages, and saying, ‘He’s going to die, he’s going to die,’ all the time. He’s getting better.”
Jean was silent. She felt worried, but if Doris refused to listen to her, there was nobody left except Becky. Somehow, at every emergency Becky seemed to be the one hope these days, unfailing and unfearing. Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every obstacle.
But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking to her of her father, Rebecca’s face looked oddly passive.
“We’re all in the Lord’s hands, Jeannie,” she said. “Trust and obey, you know. There are lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but we’ve just got that notion in our heads that we don’t want to let any of our beloved ones take the voyage. Tom’s weak, I know, and he ain’t mending so fast as I’d hoped for, but he’s gained. That’s something. You’ve been up here only a couple of months. It took longer than that to break him down, and it may take years of peace and rest to build him up. Let’s be patient. Dr. Gallup seems to think he’s got a good deal more than an even chance.”