"I was called back. I found the old body gone off in a faint, and the letter on the floor—at least, on the baby. I've got it in my pocket, I do believe.... No, I haven't!"
"What's this on the window-ledge? This is Dave's hand." But Gwen saw that it was directed to "Old Mrs. Picture Strides Cotage Chorlton under bradBury." She opened it without remorse, and the doctor said:—"Of course! He wrote two. That one's to t'other old lady. Just the same, I expect."
It was, word for word. But it had a short postscript:—"When you come back me and Dolly shall give you tea it is stood ready and grany maroBone too."
"Poor little people!" said Gwen. "How they will feel it! But I mustn't keep you, doctor."
And then, after a word or two to Widow Thrale, Dr. Nash drove off through the snow, now thickening.
Gwen, you see, was quite alive to the situation; perhaps indeed she was ready to put a worse construction on it than the doctor. He had seen so many a spark of life, far nearer extinction than old Maisie's, flicker up and grow and grow, and end by steady burning through its appointed time, that no amount of mere attenuation frightened him. Gwen, on the other hand, could not bring herself to believe that any creature so frail would stand the strain of such an earthquake of sensibilities. Unless indeed some change for the better showed itself in a few hours, she must succumb. Probably she was only relieving the tension of her own feelings by looking facts fiercely in the face. It is a common attitude of inexperience, under like circumstances. Dr. Nash certainly had said to her that "the strength was well maintained." But do we not all of us accept that phrase as an ill-omen—a vulture in the desert? No—no! Look the facts in the face! Glare at them!
Returning to the bedside, where Granny Marrable was sitting in her arm-chair beside her sister, who was quiet—possibly sleeping—she took the opportunity to note the changes that Time had wrought in each twin. The moment she came to look for them, she began to marvel that she had never seen the similarities; for instance, scarcely a month since, when the two were face to face outside this house, and each looked at the other, and neither said or thought:—"How like myself!" Was it possible that they were really more unlike then?—that the storm which had passed over both had told more, relatively, on the healthy village dame, kept blooming by a life whose cares were little more than healthy excitements, than on the mere derelict of so many storms, any one enough to send it to the bottom? There was little work left for Time or Calamity to do on that old face on the pillow; while even this four-and-twenty-hours of overwrought excitement had left its mark upon old Phoebe. Gwen saw that the faces were the same, past dispute, as soon as she compared them point by point.
Once seen, the thing grew, and became strange and unearthly, almost a discomfort. Gwen went back into the kitchen, where she found Ruth, affecting some housework but without much heart in it. She too was showing the effects of the night and day just passed, her heavy eyelids fighting with their weight, not successfully; her restless hands protesting against yawns; trying to curb rebellious lips, in vain.
"I can see the likeness now," said Gwen, thinking it best to talk.
"Between mother and—my mother?" was Ruth's reply. How else could she have said it, without beginning to call old Phoebe her aunt?