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She came over to the bedside and laid her hand on Miss Susie's forehead. "Don't you want me to bring you a drink of water?" she asked. Directly after breakfast she went to the Mosby place. The sunlight was making glaring white patches on the pavement, of which she was but dimly conscious as she walked along.
So they sat at the centre table, Myra in Miss Murgatroyd's place, and Jim in Susie's, and consumed their bread-and-cheese, and drank their beer, with huge appetites and prodigious enjoyment. And Jim used Miss Susannah's napkin, and pretended to be sentimental over it. And Myra reproved him, after the manner of Miss Murgatroyd reproving Susie.
He seemed to be afraid of the water, and struggled against it with all his small strength. "O, Dandy, darling," said Susy, in a cooing voice, as if she were talking to a baby; "be a little man, Dandy; hold up his head, and let Susy wash it all cleany! O, he's Susie's birdie gay! What makes him roll up his eyes?" "Take him out quick, Susan," said grandma Read; "he will strangle."
And then, again, doubtless Uncle Jim found great reason for thankfulness every time he glanced toward Ed Whitcomb. What had been a vague, half-formed dream in his mind bade fair to become a reality. He was Susie's boy, and circumstances had thrown them together in a way so strange that it was surely intended that they should part no more.
Upon one occasion, in reply to some of his self upbraidings, she said, "I think, Robert, you're ow're hard on yoursel' now, when ye tak the blame o' puir Susie's death; ye surely canna think itherwise than the dear bairn's time had come; an' had we bided at hame it would ha' been a' the same; for we dinna leeve an' dee by chance, and the bounds o' our lives are set by Him who kens a' things."
Is it really true that you are going to marry Mr. Airth? And have you known him long?" And Myra smiling down into Susie's plump anxious face replied: "Well, as a matter of fact, Miss Susannah, Jim Airth is going to marry me. And I cannot explain how long I have known him. I seem to have known him all my life."
Moseley in her cheerful voice. "What we knows, my man and me, is, that you two little mites has got to stay yere until we finds some good orphan school to send you to, and you has no call to trouble about payment, deary, for we're only too glad and thankful to put any children into our dead child's place and into Susie's place."
"We'd better be going, I reckon, Aunt Lorry. Miss Susie's all alone," he explained. Mary Louise recovered herself with a start. What could she be thinking of, letting Joe make her excuses for her? Somehow she felt a sharp little wave of irritation against him for it. She hastened to add, however, "Oh, no, Mrs. Mosby. Thank you so much. I really must be getting home. Aunt Susie will be worried.
She shook her head and turned again on to the Parade, and with her went Susie's light feet, so real, so active, that she almost saw the red jersey on a level with her shoulder, and those brown, defiant eyes. For it was of Susie that her mind was full poor Susie, who had "often and often not wanted to go," but who had gone.
After a while over ran Susie's brother, to summon her home to go with her mother to the village. Tot stood at the gate, looking down the long road. Sturdy maples threw curving, interlacing boughs across, through which the sun-light filtered and flickered. How cool and shady it was!
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