"I thought at first I would not tell you just yet. But I suppose the time has come; it will be no more easy to put it off. I have been to Worcester all these times to see a doctor."
I bent my head in the dark, and listened for the rest.
"He has his reputation; they said he could help me if anybody could. He thought at first he could. But to-day—"
The leaves rustled out of doors. Faith, up stairs, was singing herself to sleep with a droning sound.
"I suppose," she said at length, "I must give up and be sick now; I am feeling the reaction from having kept up so long. He thinks I shall not suffer a very great deal. He thinks he can relieve me, and that it may be soon over."
"There is no chance?"
"No chance."
I took both of her hands, and cried out, "Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!" and tried to think what I was doing, but only cried out the more.
"Why, Mary!" she said; "why, Mary!" and again, as before, she passed her soft hand to and fro across my hair, till by and by I began to think, as I had thought before, that I could bear anything which God, who loved us all,—who surely loved us all,—should send.
So then, after I had grown still, she began to tell me about it in her quiet voice; and the leaves rustled, and Faith had sung herself to sleep, and I listened wondering. For there was no pain in the quiet voice,—no pain, nor tone of fear. Indeed, it seemed to me that I detected, through its subdued sadness, a secret, suppressed buoyancy of satisfaction, with which something struggled.