His eyes closed and he seemed to forget her. Later, looking up at her from the pillows of his great carved rosewood bed—the headboard looked like the Gothic doors of a cathedral—he said, "Tell your husband"—he lifted his upper lip and showed his teeth—"to educate him."
Mary said, "Who?"—then could have bitten her tongue out, for of course there was only one "him" for these three people! She gave a frightened glance about the room, but there was no one to hear that betraying pronoun. She said, faintly: "Yes, father. Now try to rest and don't talk. You'll feel better in the morning."
"He hates a coward as much as I do," Mr. Smith mumbled. "And he has brains; doesn't get 'em from you two. Guess he gets 'em from me."
"Father! Please—please!" she said, in a terrified whisper. "Somebody might hear."
"They're welcome. Mary . . . he handed me back my own quarter for my own apples. No fool." He gave a grunt of laughter. "He said, 'Twelve times twelve' like lightning—when he was only ten! . . . Last year he took his own licking, though the Mack boy was in for it. . . . I'm going to give him a pony."
After that he seemed to forget her and slept for a while. A day or two later he forgot everything, even Johnny. The last person he remembered, curiously enough, was Miss Lydia Sampson.
It was when he was dying that he said, suddenly opening those marvelous eyes and smiling faintly: "Little wet hen! Damned game little party. Stood right up to me. . . . Wish I'd married her thirteen years ago. Then there'd have been no fuss about my grandson."
"Grandson?" said Doctor King, in a whisper to Mrs. Robertson. And she whispered back, "He is wandering."
When Mary's husband arrived for the funeral and for the reading of the will (in which there was nothing "handsome" for Johnny!) the doctor told him of the new Mr. Smith's last words; and Mr. Robertson said, hurriedly, "Delirious, of course."
"I suppose so," said Doctor King.