The physician was silent for a moment; then he said: "If there is not a change for the better soon, I fear she will live but a few days. I cannot understand how she has kept up;" and he turned and went into the sick-room.
For once the men at Stillman's ate a cold supper and did the milking. Mrs. Lansing took things into her own capable hands. John and his wife were sent for and came, and Jim Lansing quietly hitched up a team and went for Martha and her husband—poor Martha, who had not seen her mother for more than a year!
All night Mr. Stillman watched by the bedside or walked up and down the long back porch. It could not be she would die—his wife. It was the hot weather; she was just weak and tired. That was it, Mr. Stillman—worn out, tired; and rest was coming. When Martha came, the mother who had so longed for her did not recognize her.
"Mother, only speak to me!" cried the daughter in anguish; but the mother looked at her with dimming eyes that saw no more of earth, and muttered as she turned upon her couch, "Hurry, girls, it's nearly noon. Hurry! Father will be angry if he has to wait."
Then she grew quiet; only her restless hands, which her daughters vainly strove to hold, kept reaching out as if to grasp that unknown land she was so soon to enter; and before the sun was high in the morning Mrs. Stillman had found rest.
Her husband was stunned. With haggard face he bent over his dead. "If I had known," he said. "Oh, my wife, if I had known, I would have taken better care of you."
Ah, Mr. Stillman, you are not the only one who with remorseful heart cries, "If I had only known, if I had only known!"
Life went on as usual at Stillman's after the mother had left them. For a while the father was kinder, but as time went on the old habit was resumed. Elizabeth went mechanically about her work, and her father did not notice her evidently failing health. Her quietness was a relief to him; for Margaret was growing more defiant toward him, and quarrelled constantly with Tom, who, now that his mother's influence was withdrawn, became more and more meddlesome and overbearing in his conduct toward his sisters. The summer following Mrs. Stillman's death Mrs. Lansing's eldest son, Frank, took unto himself a wife; and late in the fall the neighborhood was electrified by the unexpected marriage of Mrs. Lansing and Mr. Stillman. Her boys, on learning her intention, had remonstrated; but she said: "You boys do not need me, and these girls do. Think of a young girl like Rachel saying, 'God had nothing to do with my mother's death. It was hard work killed her!' And when I tried to tell her of His goodness to His creatures, she said: 'Yes; He is good enough to men. All He cares for women is to create them for men's convenience,' And then there's little Susy, with a face like her mother's. Why, it just haunts me!"
"Well," said Jim, "things are in a bad fix over there; but it isn't Susy's face that haunts me, by any means."
His mother laughed. "I shall take care of Margaret," she said; "she and Elizabeth need some one to look after them. They are being worked to death."