There came a knock upon the door. She raised her head, and sat with a frozen look, listening. After a minute the knock was repeated. Rising, she moved noiselessly across the floor to the window, and, standing so that she could not be seen, looked out. The rigour passed from her face; she drew a breath of relief and went and opened the door.
The sunshine flooded in and in the midst of it stood Aderhold. He looked at her quietly and kindly. “I came again but to see if you were well and lacked naught.”
“I lack naught, thank you, sir,” said Joan. “And I am well—O me, O me, I would that it had taken me, too! O father, father!”
She leaned against the wall, shaken with dry sobs. The fit did not last; she was resolute enough. She straightened herself. “I’ve done what you told me to. Yesterday I washed and cleaned and let the sun in everywhere, and burned in the room the powder you gave me. Everything is clean—and lonely. No, I don’t feel badly anywhere. I feel terribly strong, as though I would live to be an old woman.... I miss father—I miss father!”
“It looks so clean and bright,” said Aderhold, “and your cat purring there on the hearth. Your father went very quickly, and without much suffering. His presence will come back to you, and you will take comfort in it. You will feel it in this room, and upon this doorstep, and out here among the fruit trees, and under the stars at night.”
“Aye,” said Joan, “I think it too. But now—” She stood beside him on the doorstep, looking out past the budding trees to the gate and the misty green twisted path that led at last to the village road. Overhead drove a fleecy drift of clouds with islands of blue. “All last night the countryside mourned low and wailed. It was the wind, but I knew it was the other too! It is sad for miles and miles to be so woeful.”
“The sickness is greatly lessening. By the time the spring is strongly here it will be over and Hawthorn beginning to forget.—You have been here now three days alone. Has no one come to enquire or help?”
“Mother Spuraway from beyond the mill-race came. No one else.”
“In a time like this all fear all. But presently friends will find out friends again.”