“No one could have done more,” said Manuel; “you were an angel to him.” He was silent a moment; then he said, “You used to call me your best friend—once. Shall I call you Pitia again, Grandmother?”
Something in his tone—or was it something not there?—drew the line deeper across the white forehead. She waited a moment before she spoke, and then answered carefully, keeping an even tone:
“Perhaps ‘Grandmother’ is better, Manuel; we are all used to it, you know. Why should we change?”
“As you please!” said Manuel; and whether there was more regret or relief in his voice, who shall say? He lingered a moment, hesitating, with words on his lips which seemed to hang, unready for utterance; and Grandmother stood very still, only her breath fluttering a little; but he need not see that, and did not.
Suddenly from the garden came a voice, clear, shrill, imperious; Rachel’s voice. “Manuel, where are you? I want you! come, quick.”
Manuel gave one glance at the still face; hesitated a moment; then muttering something about “Back soon!” he went out.
Little Grandmother stood very still. Sounds crept through her ears,—the clock ticking, the old cat purring on the hearth, the song-sparrow singing loud and clear in the apple-tree outside the sitting-room window,—but she did not heed them. Her eyes were wide open, fixed on the door through which Manuel had gone. It formed a lovely picture, blossoming trees, waving grass (winter had come and gone since Grandfather died), gay flower-beds; but she did not see them. Only when two figures crossed the space, a girl in a scarlet dress, a man at her side, looking down as she laughed up in his face, Grandmother shivered a little, and went over to where the great work-basket stood, and caught up her sewing with a kind of passion. “I have you!” she said. “You are mine, good little stitches dear, kind, good little stitches!”
If I have not said much about Manuel, it is because there is not very much to say. He was a handsome lad, and a merry one. His laziness did not show much till after Grandfather’s death, for he feared and loved the old man, and did his best to please him. How he should have made the effort to cross the Continent in search of Grandmother was one of the things that could not be understood. It was like a fire of straw, as Mrs. Peace said; it burned up bright, but there were no coals left.
Mrs. Peace had little patience with Manuel. He had been boarding with her now for two years, and had never once, so she said, wiped his feet as they should be wiped when he came into the house. Also she pronounced him lazy, shiftless, careless, and selfish.