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No one thought the nurse was ailing, except with the natural infirmity of old age, and Elspie herself uttered no word of complaint. Once or twice, while Olive was doing her utmost to enliven the sick-chamber, she saw her nurse watch her with eager love, and then sink into a grave reverie, from which it took more than one embrace to rouse her.
She thought, what if in a few weeks, a few days, the hand she held should be cold, lifeless; the form, whose faint breathings she listened to, should breathe no more, but be carried from her sight, and shut up in a grave under a stone? And then where would be Elspie the tender, the faithful who seemed to live but in loving her?
As he said these words, he stretched out his arms toward Katie; and she, trembling, afraid to be glad, shadowed by the sad past, yet trusting in the future, crept into them, and was folded close to the heart she had so faithfully loved all her life. "I promised Elspie," she whispered, "that I'd never, never give him to another." "Ay," said Donald, as he kissed her. "He's your bairn, my Katie.
One night, or rather morning, Olive was roused by the sight of a white figure standing at her bedside. She would have been startled, but that Elspie, sleeping in the same room, had many a time come to look on her darling, even in the middle of the night. She had apparently done so now. "Go to your bed again, dear nurse," anxiously cried Olive. "You should not walk about. Nay, you are not worse?"
"I was up early that Friday mornin', because I judged't when Elspie wasn't to the train some o' them in charge'd come tearin' to my house to find out why. I hadn't called Elspie, an' I s'posed she was asleep in the other bedroom. I was washin' up my breakfast dishes quiet, so's not to disturb her, when I heard somebody come on to the front stoop like they'd been sent for.
Before the starving pair had time to get fairly on their legs, Daniel strode into the camp and seized Elspie in his arms. We need not repeat what he said, for it was not meant to be made public, but no such reticence need trouble us in regard to old Duncan. "Hoot! Taniel," said he, somewhat peevishly, "keep your coortin' till efter breakfast, man!
"All that evenin' Eb an' Elspie an' I set by the cook stove, talkin', an' they seemed to be plenty to talk about, an' the air in the room was easy to get through with what you hed to say it was that kind of an evenin'. Eb was pretty quiet, though, excep' when he piped up to agree.
"Folks say that after a person dies, the picture begins to fade," Auntie Elspie said, wiping the shining surface tenderly. "But mother's picture is as bright as the day it was taken." Christina looked at the strong, kindly face, with the white cap and the little knitted shawl and felt her heart contract at the yearning in the older woman's voice.
She sat down on the edge of his bed and he placed the lamp on his high old dresser and came and sat beside her wonderingly. "I couldn't help hearing you tossing about. You're not sleepin', Gavie, you're worryin', lad." "No, no, Auntie Elspie," he cried hastily, "I'm all right, I'm not sick. You go back to bed, do. You'll catch cold." But the woman only gazed at him mournfully.
"Aye, but jist wait, you'll get yer pay for yer pranks when he does find out," admonished Auntie Elspie, like an indulgent mother threatening her mischievous children with a father's punishment. "Gavie jist won't let us put foot into the fields!" she added proudly. But the two younger ones laughed recklessly. They would be up sides with Gavie yet, for all his high-handed, bossy ways!
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