“You are better, dear! We shall have you up and out driving before long.”
“No, dear child!”—infinite weariness in tone and look. “The old clock has run clean down!”
I did not believe it, and I said it stoutly aloud, and to myself.
She seemed no more languid—only drowsy—the next afternoon, as I fluttered into the room and leaned over her in a glow of excitement:
“Cousin Mollie, darling! I have come in to say that Junius Fishburn is down-stairs. He is in town for a day on his way to Newport.”
The great eyes opened wide, a smile lighted them into liveliness.
“Oh, I am so glad!” she gasped.
She was “glad” of everything that gave me pleasure. I had never doubted that. I had never gone to her with a pain or a pleasure without getting my greedy fill of sympathy.
When I had said a hearty “bon voyage!” to my caller, I went back to tell her of the interview. She was dying. We watched by her from evening to morning twilight.
Ned Rhodes, who was in Boston when he got my letter, telling briefly what had come to us, sent me lines I read then for the first time. Had the writer shared that vigil with us, he could not have described it more vividly: