"Ay. I'm aboot by wi' it noo, and I em no' vexed. I'm terrible wearied."
"You are very wearied now," Elizabeth said, stroking the work-roughened hands that lay so calmly on the counterpane—all her life Mrs. Veitch had been a woman of much self-control, and in illness the habit did not desert her—"you are very wearied now, but you will get a good rest and soon be your busy self again."
"Na, I've been wearied for years.... Ma man died forty years syne, an' I've had ma face agin the wind ever since. That last nicht he lookit at the fower bairns—wee Hugh was a baby in ma airms—and he says, 'Ye've aye been fell, Tibbie. Be fell noo.' Lyin' here, I'm wonderin' what ma life's been—juist a fecht to get the denner ready, and a fecht to get the tea ready, an' a terrible trauchle on the washin'-days. It vexes me to think I've done so little to help ither folk. I never had the time."
"Ah! but you're forgetting," said Elizabeth. "The people you helped remember. I have heard—oh! often—from one and another how you did a sick neighbour's washing, and gave a hot meal to children whose mothers had to work out, and carried comfort to people in want. Every step your tired feet took on those errands is known to God."
The sick woman hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes had closed again, and she had fallen into the fitful sleep of weakness.
Elizabeth sat and looked at the old face, with its stern, worn lines. Here was a woman who had lived her hard, upright life, with no soft sayings and couthy ways, and she was dying as she had lived, "uncheered and undepressed" by the world's thoughts of her.
The fog crept close to the window.
Kate put the dishes she had washed into the press. The London express rushed past on its daily journey. The familiar sound struck on the dim ear, and Mrs. Veitch asked, "Is that ma denner awa' by?"
Kate wiped her eyes. The time-honoured jest hurt her to-day.
"Poor mother!" she said. "She's aye that comical."