“But I allus do,” answered Tommy, rather indignantly. “She don’t never hear me come; it do be a surprise for she.”
Then he creaked across the room on tip-toe, stepped first of all on to the hassock and from this to the chair. When he raised the curtain the sight of the lined face lying so still, so very still, upon the pillow stopped the “Bo” before it left his lips.
Instead, “Granny, Granny,” he whispered. “I do be come to play with ee, my Granny.”
The tired old eyes opened very slowly, and for a moment it almost seemed as though she smiled. “Ma lovely,” she whispered.
But there were no play-toys to-day, for in the same room where a new life had begun so many years ago an old one was soon to end. There was no storm now. Outside the sun shone brightly, and a little breeze gently moved the old chintz window curtains made so many years ago by Granny’s busy hands.
Granfäather Tregennis had come into the room and large tears were rolling down his cheeks. Tommy thought that grown men never cried. His wonder deepened when Granfäather, who was quite grown up, knelt down on the other side of the bed and covered his face with his hands.
Mammy and Aunt Keziah Kate were crying too.
Tommy’s heart tightened with despair. Granny had forgotten him, for again her eyes were closed.
Then he remembered something that would surely arouse her interest, and from his trouser pocket he pulled out yards of tangled, woollen chain; the very chain that Granny had taught him to make in the far-away Christmas holidays.