They said to each other after a while that she looked “jolly bad,” but that she was in such good spirits it must be all right.
Their father was as much mystified as they; but he was troubled in conscience, as if he had not spoken plainly enough, had not made it clear enough what “her state” was. She had not asked for the clergyman—she had not asked for anything. Was it necessary that he should speak again? There was one thing she had near her, but that so fantastic a thing!—a photograph—one of the quantities of such rubbish the girls and she had brought home—a woman wrapped in a mantle floating in the air.
“Take that thing away,” he said to Moulsey. It irritated him to see a frivolous thing like that—a twopenny-halfpenny photograph—so near his wife’s bed.
“Don’t take it away,” she said, in the whisper to which her voice had sunk; “it gives me such pleasure.”
“Pleasure!” he cried; even to speak of pleasure was wrong at such a moment. And then he added, “Would you like me to read to you? Would you like to see—anyone?”
“To see anyone? Whom should I wish to see but you, Edward, and the children?”
“We haven’t been—so religious, my dear, as perhaps we ought,” stammered the anxious man. “If I sent for—Mr. Baldwin perhaps, to read the prayers for the sick and—and talk to you a little?”
She looked at him with some wonder for a moment, and then she said, with a smile, “Yes, yes; by all means, Edward, if you like it.”
“I shall certainly like it, my dearest; and it is right—it is what we should all wish to do at the——” He could not say at the last—he could not say when we are dying—it was too much for him; but certainly she must understand now. And he went away hurriedly to call the clergyman, that no more time might be lost.
“Moulsey,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “have we come then quite—to the end now?”