"If she can recognise you-I presume there is nobody else she would so like to see. As in reason there ought not."
"Can you take me there, Dr. Sandford?"
"Not at this hour; I am going another way. This afternoon I will take you, if you will go. Will you go?"
"If you will be so good as to take me."
"I will come for you then at four o'clock."
That ride I have reason to remember. It was a fair June afternoon, though the month was almost out now; the peculiar brilliance which distinguishes June shone through the air and sparkled on the hills. With clear bright outlines the Catskill range stretched away right and left before us, whenever our road brought us in view of it; fulness of light on the sunny slopes, soft depth of shadow on the others, proclaiming the clear purity of the atmosphere. The blue of the sky, the fresh sweetness of the air, the life of colour in the fields and trees, all I suppose made their appeal at the doors of my heart; for I felt the pressure. It is the life in this June weather, I think, that reproaches what in us is not life; and my spirit was dead. Not really, but practically; and the June beauty gave me pain. I was out of harmony with it. And I heard nature's soft whisper of reproof. Justly given; for when one is out of harmony with nature, there is sure to be some want of harmony with the Author of nature. The doctor drove me silently, letting nature and me have it out together; till we came to the old cottage of Molly Skelton, and he handed me from the curricle. Still the doctor was silent.
He stopped, purposely I think, to speak to his groom; and I went in first. The rows of flowers by the side of the walk were tangled and overgrown and a thicket of weeds; no care had visited them for many a day; but they were there yet. Molly had not forgotten her old tastes. I went on, wondering at myself, and entered the cottage. The sick woman lay on the bed there, alone and seemingly asleep; I turned from her to look at the room. The same old room; little different from what it used to be; even two pots with geraniums in them stood on the window-sill, drooping their heads for want of water. Nobody had watered them for so long. Clearly Molly had not changed. Was it only I? I looked and wondered, as I saw myself again at ten years old in that very room. Here had been those first cups of tea; those first lessons in A B C; and other lessons in the beginnings of a higher knowledge. What had they all come to? Was Molly the better in anything beyond her flowers? What had eleven years wrought for her?
I turned again from the past, as the doctor came in, to look at the poor creature herself. She did not answer the words he addressed to her; I doubted if she heard them; she was evidently oppressed with disease, which was fast making an end of her. Experience had taught me now to judge somewhat of the looks and condition of sick people. Molly, I saw, was very sick; and I knew soon that it was with a combination of evils, which had taken hold of her, and made her poor existence a wearisome thing. It was near an end now.
"Speak to her," - said the doctor.
And I did, and he did; but we got no response. None in words; I fancied that the look of the face bore witness to some aroused attention; might it be more? One hand of Molly's lay stretched out upon the coverlid. She was a mass of disease; I should not have thought once that I could touch that hand; but I had had training since then. I put my hand upon that poor hand and clasped it. I fancied, I cannot tell why, that Molly was sensible of my action and that she liked it; yet she did not speak. - We sat so, my hand in hers, or hers in mine, and Dr. Sandford watching us. Time went by. I hardly knew how it went.