“Mother, mother! how can I bear to see you suffer so?”
The white, quivering lips tried to wreathe themselves into a smile, and the anguished eyes looked tenderly into hers.
“Beloved child, it will—soon—be over, and I—shall be at home—indeed.”
Her eyes sought the doctor’s face. “How long—”
“A very few hours at the most.”
“Then leave me alone with my child,” she said, speaking in a stronger voice than before.
The physician gave Floy some directions in regard to the administering of restoratives, and he and his assistant withdrew.
Left alone together, hand clasped in hand, mother and daughter gazed tenderly, mournfully into each other’s eyes, silent tears trickling down the cheeks of both. Then gathering up all her failing energies for the task, Mrs. Kemper told Floy in a few brief sentences the story of her adoption and all they had heard from her true mother’s lips in the little shanty inn at Clearfield Station.
Some things she said which, though they fell almost unheeded upon Floy’s ears at the time, afterward, when she had come to care for that unknown mother, were a great comfort. It was pleasant to have learned from the dear dying voice that she who gave her being was unmistakably a lady by birth and breeding, whom even a stranger recognized as gentle and lovable.