"Yes," said Barbara, "I suppose there isn't any difference. But I think anyhow he isn't any worse. Mamma is with him, and he was taking some beef-tea just now"—Mr. Pryor nodded grave approval of the beef-tea—"but he'll be very glad to see you in a few minutes. Won't you sit down?"
He sat down, nursing the book, which had a narrow ribbon hanging out of it.
"I hope Mrs. Strange is pretty well—as well as can be expected?" he said, after a pause. "Not over-fatigued, I trust?"
"Oh, no; I don't think so," the girl replied. "Mamma seems very well."
"Ah, quite so. She bears up, she bears up. Well, that is what we must all try to do—to bear up. It is the only thing."
"Yes," said Barbara. She was not quite sure that she ought to have said that her mother seemed very well. "Of course it is a trying time," she added, by way of softening the possibly indiscreet admission.
"Certainly, certainly—very trying for you both," Mr. Pryor agreed. Yet even to his dull eyes it was apparent that this very trying time had not dimmed the bright face opposite. There was a peculiar radiance and warmth of youth about Barbara that afternoon, a glow of life which forced itself on his perception. She did not smile, she was very quiet, and yet it seemed as if some new delight, some unspoken hope, had awakened within her, quickening and kindling her to the very finger-tips. She sat demurely in her low chair, with her face turned towards the window, but there was a soft flame of colour on her cheek, and a light in her eyes when she lifted her drooping lashes. In that great, cold house, through which the shadow of death was creeping, she was the incarnation of life and promise, a curious contrast to her surroundings. It would hardly have seemed stranger if suddenly, in the desolate world without, one had come on a burning bush of pomegranate flowers among the cold frost-blossoms of the Mitchelhurst hedges.
Mr. Pryor felt something of all this. He did not quite like it. Of course he did not want to see the girl haggard and weary, but he was so chilly, as he sat there by the fireside with his book on his knee, that it seemed to him as if the swift, light pulsations of youth were hardly proper. He would have been more at his ease with Barbara if she had had a slight toothache, or a cold in her head. He felt it his duty to depress her a little, quietly, as she sat there.
"The hour of Death's approach is a very solemn one, even for the bystanders," Mr. Pryor began, after a moment's consideration.
Barbara said, "Yes it was," with an almost disconcerting readiness.