Judith remembered that Harriet Hosmer had said she could be happy anywhere with good health and a bit of marble.
But suppose she had not had her bit of marble?
These days were the history of her summer of stories.
The doctor told them that Aunt Rody might be helpless in bed for months; she might gain strength and sit in her chair again. He had known such instances. That was in the first week; in the second week he gave them no hope.
The stricken old woman was alive; that was all she was to Judith: an old woman who was not dead yet.
Judith was pitiful; she loved her with a compassionate tenderness as she would have loved any helpless, stricken thing; but she was hardly “Aunt Rody” any longer.
She was as helpless as a baby, with none of a baby’s innocence, or loveliness or lovingness; there was no hope for this gray-haired, wrinkled mass of human flesh, but in casting off this veil of the flesh, no hope but in death. It was as if death were alive before Judith’s eyes, and within touch of her hand.
She had no memory of Aunt Rody as the others had, to give affection to; there was only this. There was scarcely any memory for her gratitude to cling to.
There was one comfort left; she was not afraid of her now.
If she had stayed with her, instead of being at home at the parsonage, she might have grown up to love and understand her; instead she had grown away from love and understanding.