Chapter 10 - Page 2

the return. There was always my father in
the house, than whom never was a more devoted husband, and often
there were others, one daughter in particular, but they scarce
dared tend my mother - this one snatched the cup jealously from
their hands. My mother liked it best from her. We all knew this.
'I like them fine, but I canna do without you.' My sister, so
unselfish in all other things, had an unwearying passion for
parading it before us. It was the rich reward of her life.

The others spoke among themselves of what must come soon, and they
had tears to help them, but this daughter would not speak of it,
and her tears were ever slow to come. I knew that night and day
she was trying to get ready for a world without her mother in it,
but she must remain dumb; none of us was so Scotch as she, she must
bear her agony alone, a tragic solitary Scotchwoman. Even my
mother, who spoke so calmly to us of the coming time, could not
mention it to her. These two, the one in bed, and the other
bending over her, could only look long at each other, until slowly
the tears came to my sister's eyes, and then my mother would turn
away her wet face. And still neither said a word, each knew so
well what was in the other's thoughts, so eloquently they spoke in
silence, 'Mother, I am loath to let you go,' and 'Oh my daughter,
now that my time is near, I wish you werena quite so fond of me.'
But when the daughter had slipped away my mother would grip my hand
and cry, 'I leave her to you; you see how she has sown, it will
depend on you how she is to reap.' And I made promises, but I
suppose neither of us saw that she had already reaped.

In the night my mother might waken and sit up in bed, confused by
what she saw. While she slept, six decades or more had rolled back
and she was again in her girlhood; suddenly recalled from it she
was dizzy, as with the rush of the years. How had she come into
this room? When she went to bed last night, after preparing her
father's supper, there had been a dresser at the window: what had
become of the salt-bucket, the meal-tub, the hams that should be
hanging from the rafters? There were no rafters; it was a papered
ceiling. She had often heard of open beds, but how came she to be
lying in one? To fathom these things she would try to spring out
of bed and be startled to find it a labour, as if she had been
taken ill in the night. Hearing her move I might knock on the wall
that separated us, this being a sign, prearranged between us, that
I was near by, and so all was well, but sometimes the knocking
seemed to belong to the past, and she would cry, 'That is my father
chapping at the door, I maun rise and let him in.' She seemed to
see him - and it was one much younger than