“Of course you’ll be well by then, dearie. You heard what the doctor said to-day—that you might go back to having your cup of tea again to-morrow. That’s always the first sign you’re getting well, then you get leave to sit up. A week sitting up in your room, a week going downstairs——” Mary Ann began to check off the weeks on her fingers, but her mother interrupted.
“Was that Jane the doctor was talking to so long in the hall to-day?”
“Let me see. No, that was Selina.”
“What was he saying to her?”
“He was saying every blessed thing that he’s said to me since you took sick, and that I’ve repeated over again to her. But you know how it is with those two, Ma. I believe they think there’s some kind of magic in the marriage ceremony that gives a woman sense—they don’t give me credit for a speck. When Selina told me she was going to speak to the doctor herself to-day, says she, ‘You know that it stands to reason, Mary Ann, that you can’t be as experienced as one that has been a wife five years and a widow seven’; and then Jane seemed to think it was being cast up to her that she wasn’t a widow, so she speaks up real snappy, ‘Nor one that’s brought up a family of four boys,’ and then Selina she looked mad.” Mary Ann went off into a peal of laughter at the remembrance.
“Jane told me he said at my age the heart was weak and there was always more or less danger.”
“He always says that after he’s told what good sound lungs you have, and what steady progress you’re making, and how he’d rather pass you for insurance than most women half your age. It means we’re not to be too reckless, all the same.”
“She says if I should recover from this attack——”
“Sakes alive! Did she come over all that with you too? ‘If you should recover from this attack, you’d better sell the house and visit round among your married children?’ Visit round as much as you like, Ma, but have a house of your own to come back to; that’s my advice.”
“She said you wouldn’t want to keep up a house after you were left alone——”