She sighed as she looked.
Ann was writing at the bureau, had been writing since luncheon, absorbed, never lifting her head, but now she blotted vigorously the last sheet, put the pen back in the tray, shut the lid of the ink-bottle, and announced:
"Now, then, Mother, that's your Life written!"
Mrs. Douglas looked at the finished pile of manuscript and sighed again.
Ann got up and went over to the window. "You are sighing like a furnace, Mother. What's the matter? Does it depress you to think that I've finished my labours? Oh, look at the sunset! It bodes ill for the Moncrieffs ever getting over the door, poor lambs! Look at that quiet, shining bit over the Farawa, how far removed it looks from tempests! D'you know what that sky reminds me of, Mother? The story of your life that I've just finished. The clouds and the angry red colour are all you passed through, and that quiet, serene streak is where you are now, the clear shining after rain. It may be dull, but you must admit it is peaceful."
"Oh, we are peaceful enough just now, but think of Jim in South Africa, and Charlotte and Mark in India—who knows what news we may have of them any day? I just live in dread of what may happen next."
"But, Mother, you've always lived in dread. Mark used to say that the telegraph boys drew lots among themselves as to who should bring the telegrams to our house. You used to rush out with the unopened envelope and implore the boy to tell you if it were bad news, and when you did open it your frightened eyes read things that never were on the paper. If we happened to be all at home when you were confronted with a wire you didn't care a bit—utterly callous. It was only your husband and your children you cared about—ah, well, you had the richest, fullest, happiest life for more than thirty years, and that's not so small a thing to boast of."
"Oh, Ann, I'm not ungrateful, only——"
"Only you're like Davie when we told him to go away and count his blessings. 'I've done it,' he came back to tell us, 'and I've six things to be thankful for and nine to be unthankful for.'"
Mrs. Douglas laughed as she went back to her chair by the fire and took up her knitting. "No, I've nothing to be unthankful for, only I think so much of me died with your father and Robbie and Davie that I seem to be half with you and half with them where they are gone."