“Weary and spent!” Yes, almost to death. The parched lips said faintly, “Come again,” and the blue, beseeching eyes said more. Allison promised surely that she would come, and she kissed her again, before she went away.
She came often—every day, and many times a day, and she always had a good word to say to the poor sorrowful soul, who needed it so much. Annie lingered longed than had seemed possible at first, and there came a day when every moment that Allison could spare was given to her, and then a long night of watching, till at the dawning she passed away—sinful, but forgiven; trembling, yet not afraid. Allison kissed the dead mouth, and clipped from the forehead one ring of bright hair, saying to herself: “To mind me, if ever I should grow faithless and forget.”
But many things had happened before this came to pass. For at the end of the first week of Dickson’s stay among the sick and sorrowful folk, there came to her the message for which she had through all the days been waiting. It was Doctor Fleming who brought it, saying only, “Come.”
“Is he dying?” she found voice to say, as they passed into the room together.
“No. Oh! no. But he has come to himself, in a measure, and needs to be roused. Your coming may startle him. That is what I wish. It cannot really harm him.”
And so with little outward token of the inward trembling which seized her when she saw his face, Allison stood beside her husband. Yes, her husband! For the first time, scarcely knowing what she did, she said to herself, “My husband.”
The doctors had something to do for him, and something to say to one another, and she stood looking on in silence, pale, but calm and firm, at least as far as they could see. They spoke to him and he answered sensibly enough, and muttered, and complained, and begged to be let alone, as sick folk will, and told them at last that little good had all their physic done him yet.
They let in the light, and his eye followed Allison and rested on her face for a moment; then he sighed and turned away. No one moved, and in a little he turned his head again, and his colour changed. Then they let down the curtain, and the room was in shadow.
“A dream—the old dream, ay coming—coming—only a dream,” they heard him say with a sigh.
Doctor Fleming beckoned to Allison, and she followed him from the room.