Her father remained still a moment—then he rose up and went out of the room, and she heard his steps going up to the unused attic. Nettie crossed her hands upon her breast, and smiled. She was too much exhausted to pray otherwise than with a thought.
Then slumber stole over her, and she slept sweetly and quietly while the hours of the summer afternoon rolled away. Her mother watched beside her for a long while before she awoke, and during that time read surely in Nettie's delicate cheek and too delicate colour what was the sentence of separation. She read it, and smothered the cry of her heart, for Nettie's sake.
The sun was descending toward the western hill country, and long level rays of light were playing in the tree-tops, when Nettie awoke.
"Are you there, mother?" she said—"and is the Sunday so near over? How I have slept!"
"How do you feel, dear?"
"Why, I feel well," said Nettie. "It has been a good day. The gold is all in the air here—not in the streets." She had half raised herself, and was sitting looking out of the window.
"Do you think of that city all the time?" inquired Mrs. Mathieson, half jealously.
"Mother," said Nettie, slowly, still looking out at the sunlight, "would you be very sorry, and very much surprised, if I were to go there before long?"
"I should not be very much surprised, Nettie," answered her mother, in a tone that told all the rest. Her child's eye turned to her sorrowfully and understandingly.
"You'll not be very long before you'll be there too," she said. "Now kiss me, mother."