“Nothing, dear Auntie Bell,” said Bud, astonished. “You needn't tell me! What was the doctor saying?”
“He said you were to be kept cheerful,” said Bud, “and I'm doing the best I can—”
“Bless me, lass! do you think it's cheery to be sitting there with a face like an old Geneva watch? I would sooner see you romping.”
But no, Bud could not romp that day, and when her uncle Dan came up he found her reading aloud from Bell's favorite Gospel according to John—her auntie's way of securing the cheerfulness required. He looked at the pair, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bent, and all the joviality with which he had come carefully charged gave place for a little to a graver sentiment. So had Ailie sat, a child, beside her mother on her death-bed, and, reading John one day, found open some new vista in her mind that made her there and then renounce her dearest visions, and thirl herself forever to the home and him and Bell.
“Well, Dan,” said his sister, when the child was gone, “what have you brought me? Is it the usual pound of grapes?”—for she was of the kind whose most pious exercises never quench their sense of fun, and a gift of grapes in our place is a doleful hint to folks bedridden; I think they might as well bring in the stretching-board.
“A song-book would suit you better,” said the lawyer. “What do you think's the matter with you? Worrying about that wean! Is this your Christian resignation?”
“I am not worrying, Dan,” she protested. “At least, not very much, and I never was the one to make much noise about my Christianity.”
“You need to be pretty noisy with it nowadays to make folk believe you mean it.”
“What did Dr. Brash say down the stair?” she asked. “Does he—does he think I'm going to die?”
“Lord bless me,” cried her brother, “this is not the way that women die. I never heard of you having a broken heart. You're missing all the usual preliminaries, and you haven't even practised being ill. No, no, Bell; it 'll be many a day, I hope, before you're pushing up the daisies, as that vagabond Wanton Wully puts it.”