Another head shake, while the eager eyes went from Edith’s face to Gertie, and from Gertie back again.
“I think I can guess,” Edith said. “It is about Gertie. You wish to talk to me of her.”
Then the quivering lips moved, and gave forth a sound which Edith knew meant “Yes,” and she continued: “You are anxious about her future if you die?”
Mrs. Rogers waited a moment and then nodded assent, while every muscle of her face worked painfully as she tried to speak.
“Oh, auntie,” Gertie cried, as she bent over the sick woman, “don’t be troubled for me. I can take care of myself. I am strong and well and willing to work. I can find something to do, and everybody will be kind to me.”
There were tears in Mary’s eyes, and they rolled down her cheeks as she looked at the brave young girl, who was so sure of finding kindness in everybody.
Meanwhile Edith had been thinking, and as the result of her thought she said:
“Mrs. Rogers, will it comfort you to know that if you die Gertie shall come to live with me, and that I will take care of her?”
Then the quivering lips managed to say: “Yes,” and feeling for Gertie’s hand Mary put it in Edith’s, and whispered “Yours,” while the sweat drops on her face grew larger and thicker with her agonizing efforts to tell what she could not. How hard she tried to make them understand the secret she had kept so long, and once she took the shawl which lay near her, and folding it up to look like a child, she held it close to her bosom as a mother holds her baby, and then with her hand pointed to Gertie, and from her to Edith, mumbling the one word, “Yours, yours.”
“What does she mean?” Edith asked in great perplexity. “It must be something about little Jamie,—that you will take care of him perhaps. Is that it?”