"I lost my wife," said John Sandford, abruptly.
"I'm sorry," said Doctor Bayne. "I forgot that; I now remember hearing of it. Well, it cannot be helped, but it makes a great difference having young ones about one; young people make one young again."
He stayed some time from pure kindness, and Mr. Sandford was anything but grateful to him; he wanted to think out by himself the thought his words had given him. However, he asked him to come next day; his visit was something to look forward to.
When he left Mr. Sandford lay quietly thinking.
"Young people make one young again."
Perhaps this was true; he was not old; he was strong and had never been ill. He was a hale strong man under sixty, and yet the doctor spoke as though now he must expect illness, then after illness came the end, yes, the end!
The evening shadows crept slowly over everything; all the hours since the doctor had left him John Sandford lay quiet, thinking, thinking of all that had come and gone, all that might come and go.
At length he slept, and in his sleep, caused by the soothing draught given to him, he dreamed strange things; some one, his sister, seemed pursuing him with something that always threatened to overwhelm him, and two girls kept warding it off. He saw their outstretched hands, and he had a sort of consciousness that with them there, she could not hurt him. The dream was so vivid that when he woke he looked round him expecting still to see the pursuing figure. He gave a deep sigh, the reality had been to terrible so him.
The morning light was struggling against the night shadows; it was still very early, so early that no one was astir, save a sleepy girl whose duty it was to light the kitchen-fire, and who was so startled by the sound of his bell that she let her sticks burn out without any coal while she went and stared at the bell-clapper as though there she could discover the reason for its early motion. As she looked it rang again, the master must be ill—what ought she to do? Rouse the cook and risk a furious scolding from her, or go and see what he wanted? While she was hesitating it rang a third time, and in her confusion she did both, she rushed into the cook's room and told her the bell was ringing like mad, and that Mr. Sandford was ill, and she fled upstairs in breathless haste, and knocked and went in, expecting to see her master on the floor in a fit, when she was quite prepared to throw her apron over her head and scream to the best of her ability.
"What do you mean by keeping me waiting and not answering my bell?" he asked in a tone of fury.