“Hush!” she said; “your grandfather is ill. I saw he was not over-well this week past, and this morning he could not eat; so when I saw the doctor pass, I hailed him in. I fear—it may be—the fever.”
She spoke with a catch in her voice, but she tried to smile as she put her arm around Philip with more than her usual tenderness and drew him into the house. The doctor was coming out of the sick man’s room, and he was looking rather grave; but he said little, only leaving some powders, with directions as to food and other matters, promising to call again later in the day. The old man grew no worse, however, and indeed in a few days he persisted in leaving his bed and coming out to his favorite seat beside the fire; but he seemed to have but little strength, and to have grown much older in those few days of illness.
The first evening that he took his place again in the family circle was a memorable one for Philip. The boy had always been a great favorite with his grandfather, who delighted to ask him questions about what he had seen during the day; there was never much to tell, but Philip had a whimsical fashion of making a great deal of a small adventure in relating it, and often some trifling remark would suggest past events to the old man, and he would tell the boy strange stories of the past, which though often repeated were always new and of absorbing interest to his grandson and to Mag, who was ever an interested listener.
On this particular evening, however, she seemed listless and distraught, and after a while she left her sewing and knelt in front of the fire in a drooping attitude, which made Philip ask at last half timidly (for since the episode with Dash he had not felt quite at ease with his mother):
“Are ye cold, mother dear? Shall I put a few coals on the fire?” She shook her head without replying, and after a moment Philip asked his grandfather for a story; but, to the great surprise of both, Mag suddenly spoke:
“Wait a moment,” she said, “both of ye; it is my turn to tell the story to-night, an’ ye must listen patiently while I tell it, even though it may seem over-long.”
She put her hand to her throat as though something there choked her, and in the flickering firelight her eyes gleamed strangely. Philip was so dumbfounded at the idea of his silent mother telling him a story that he looked from her to his grandfather in amazement. The old man shook his head.
“My poor lass!” he said softly. “Perhaps it will ease the poor troubled mind of ye to tell it to the lad.”
And Mag began her story in a cold, hard voice, with her eyes still fixed upon the fire and her position unchanged.