“I wish she would stay in bed; the doctor said she ought to do so yesterday; but she seemed better, and begged so hard to come down this morning that I gave way.”
“It’s another sign,” said the maid; “they always want to get up towards the last.”
“The doctor promised he would be here by twelve, and now it is nearly two.”
He came an hour later. “She must be taken upstairs at once,” he said; so they carried her up, Clarke and the doctor between them, while Mrs. North followed anxiously; and all of them knew that Aunt Anne would never walk down the stairs again.
Then a telegram was sent to Florence and Walter at Monte Carlo.
But she was a little better in the evening, and Mrs. North brightened up as she saw it. Perhaps Clarke was a foolish croaker, and signs were foolish things to trouble one’s self about. The old lady might live, after all, and there would be some happiness yet.
“No, Aunt Anne, you are not going to get up yet,” she said next morning, in answer to an inquiring look; “you must wait until the doctor has been; remember it is my turn to be autocratic.”
“Yes, my love,” and she dozed off. Half her time was spent in sleep. Since Mrs. North’s arrival there had stolen over her a gradual contentment, as if a crisis had occurred, and the blackness of the past grown dim. Perhaps it was giving place to all that was in her heart, or to the sound of Mrs. North’s fresh young voice, and the loving touch of her hand. Be it what it might, Alfred Wimple and the misery that he had caused seemed to have gone farther and farther away, while peacefulness was stealing over her. “It is like being with my dear Florence and Walter,” she said to Mrs. North once—“only perhaps you understand even better than they could, for you have gone through the pain.”
“Yes, dear Aunt Anne, I have gone through the pain”—and Mrs. North sat waiting for the doctor again, not that she was very uneasy to-day, for the old lady was a little better, and hope grows up quickly when youth passes by.
