“Good-bye, little girl,” he returned, throwing her a kiss from the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I’ll run up this afternoon.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
DOWN THE RIVER
Tom did not get up in the afternoon. However, he came in the evening, and the next morning, and the next.
Margaretta and Roger, Bonny, Selina, and Mr. Jimson also came. Grandma was decidedly better, and in their joy they came even oftener than they had in their sorrow at her illness.
Berty could hardly contain herself for very lightness and extravagance of spirit. It had seemed to her that she could not endure the mere thought of a further and long-continued illness on the part of her beloved grandmother. To think of that other contingency—her possible death—sent her into fits of shuddering and despondency in which it seemed as if she, too, would die if her grandmother did.
Now all was changed. Day by day the exquisite sunshine continued, the air was balmy, there was a yellow haze about the sun. It seemed to Berty that she was living in an enchanted world. Grandma was going about the house with a firm step—a bright eye. She had gone over all her trunks and closets. She had sorted letters, tidied her boxes of clothes, and arranged all her belongings with a neatness and expedition that seemed to betoken the energy of returned youthfulness.
She was also knitting again. Nothing had pleased Berty as much as this. Tears of delight fell on the silk stocking as she handed it to Grandma the first time she asked her for it.
“Dear Grandma,” said Berty, on this afternoon, abruptly dropping on a foot-stool beside her, and putting her head on her knee, “dear Grandma.”