"Oh, I couldn't—I couldn't! I'd be afraid to."
"But why? Nobody could possibly suppose—"
"Because," she said, "if I saw him once I might want to see him again."
Carl frowned with bewilderment, but Johnny's mother began to pace up and down, back and forth—then suddenly flew out of the room and upstairs, to fall, crying, upon her bed.
However, she obeyed Doctor King's summons. The day the stage went jogging and creaking past Miss Lydia's door the lady inside looked straight ahead of her, and some one who saw her said she was very pale—"anxious about her father," Old Chester said, sympathetically. Then Old Chester wondered whether Carl was so unchristian as to refuse to come and see his father-in-law—"on his deathbed!"—or whether old Mr. Smith "on his death bed" was so unchristian as to refuse to see his son-in-law. "What did they quarrel about!" Old Chester said. "Certainly Mr. Smith seemed friendly enough to the young man before Mary married him."
"IF I SAW HIM ONCE I MIGHT WANT TO SEE HIM AGAIN"
When Mary—she was in the early thirties now, and Johnny was thirteen—came into her father's room and sat down beside him, the old man opened his eyes and looked at her.
"Pleasant journey?" he said, thickly.
"Yes, father. I hope you are feeling better?"