'That was nice!' he murmured, smiling, and lay for a little with his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he said—
'May I call you Elizabeth?'
Elizabeth's tender look and gesture answered. He gazed at her in silence, gathering strength for some effort that was evidently on his mind.
'Father minds awfully,' he said at last, his look clouding. 'And there's no one—to—to cheer him up.'
'He loves you so,' said Elizabeth, with difficulty, 'he always has loved you so.'
The furrow on his brow grew a little deeper.
'But that doesn't matter now—nothing matters but—'
After a minute he resumed, in a rather stronger voice—'Tell me about the woods—and the ash trees. I did laugh over that—old Hull telling you there were none—and you—Why, I could have shown him scores.'
She told him all the story of the woods, holding his hot hand in her cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave her, and smiling at him. Her voice soothed him. It was so clear and yet soft, like a song,—not a song of romance or passion, but like the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing. And her face reminded him even more of his mother than Pamela's. She was not the least like his mother, but there was something in her expression that first youth cannot have—something comforting, profound, sustaining.
He wanted her always to sit there. But his mind wandered from what she was saying after a little, and returned to his father.