Half an hour passed away, and the three waiting below heard the low murmur of voices,—one of surprise and eager inquiry, the other, mournful, heartbroken, and, as Jack knew, full of bitter shame. Then there was a sound of sobbing, with broken sentences of love, and then another silence, followed by a hasty call for Jack to come quickly.
They were in the room in a moment, and each one was struck with the expression of Annie’s face, where wonder and surprise, sorrow and compassion, with love unutterable, were blended together. Tender and pitiful as is a mother towards her suffering child, she seemed toward Georgie, and though she could not speak, her eyes were fastened upon the head bowed down at her side, and her hands kept caressing the tangled curls which lay upon the bedclothes.
“Annie, you are almost home,” Maude said, bending over her and kissing her white brow.
Annie nodded and raised her eyes once upon them all, as if in a farewell; then her head drooped lower and lower upon her breast; while her hand still smoothed and fondled Georgie’s hair. A moment went by which seemed an hour, then over the dying child there passed a shudder of pain; the hand ceased its caressing motion, and buried itself in the mass of hair; the eyes glanced upward, and the quivering lips said, brokenly, “Thank you, Jesus, I have seen my mother,” and then Annie was dead.
Old Luna, who was present, responded, “Yes, blessed lamb, no doubt her mother did come to meet her. It’s apt to be the case.”
This was Luna’s solution of Annie’s last words, while Maude had a different one; and when they were alone and Edna said to her, “Do you believe Annie’s mother was with her when she died?” She answered, “I know she was!”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
AFTER ANNIE’S DEATH.
Mrs. Burton had been greatly distressed at the account given her by the servant of Miss Georgie’s going off in her party dress, without so much as telling her, and naturally enough felt a very little annoyed with the cause of her pet’s anxiety.
“That child will be the death of Georgie,” she said to her husband; and when he asked, “Who is she, any way, and what is she to Georgie?” she hardly knew what to reply, for she did not herself know just what Annie was to Georgie. “Not much, any way, second or third cousin,” she guessed; and then she bemoaned Georgie’s kind, tender, affectionate nature, which made her love everything young and helpless. She should go over in the morning herself, she said: and accordingly, as early as nine o’clock, she started for Jersey City, with a box of clothing for Georgie, who, with her water-proof wrapped around her uncovered shoulders, sat by the couch of the dead child, with a strange stony look upon her face, and in her red, swollen eyes.