“My child,” said Grandma, “I never felt better in my life; but despatch your messengers.”
Berty left the room. She had a strange sensation as if walking on air. “Bring your boat, Roger,” she wrote, “your family boat. Mine isn’t large enough.”
Her messengers were faithful, and in an hour Margaretta, Bonny, Roger, and Tom were hastening to the house.
Berty met them in the hall. “No, Grandma isn’t ill,” she said, with a half-sob. “Don’t stare at her, and don’t frighten her. She just took a fancy to go out boating, and to have you all with her.”
“But it is so unlike Grandma to interfere or to disarrange plans,” murmured Margaretta; “there is something wrong.” However, she said nothing aloud, and went quietly into the parlour with the others and spoke to Grandma, who looked at them all with a strange brightness in her eyes, but said little.
Tom could not get the fright from his manner. Old Mrs. Travers would not interrupt a railway journey for a trifle. They might say what they liked.
In somewhat breathless and foreboding silence they got into Roger’s big boat moored at the landing, and he and Tom took the oars.
Once out upon the bosom of the calmly flowing river, their faces brightened. Sky and water were resplendent, and they were softly enveloped in the golden haze of approaching sunset.
Here where the river was broadest the shores seemed dim in the yellow light. With the dying glory of the sun behind them, they went down the stream in the direction of Grandma’s pointing hand.
How well she looked, propped up on her cushions in the stern. Her eyes were shining with a new light, her very skin seemed transparent and luminous. Was it possible that, instead of failing and entering upon a weary old age, this new-found energy betokened a renewed lease of life? Their faces brightened still further. Tom at last lost the fright from his eyes, and Berty’s vanished colour began to come fitfully back.