"Nothing," said Buff. He sat gloomily on a chair, with his hands in his pockets. "I'm as dull as a bull," he added.
His sister did not ask the cause of his depression. She sat down on a low chair and drew him on to her lap, and cuddled him up and stroked his hair, and Buff, who as a rule sternly repulsed all caresses, laid his head on her shoulder and, sniffing dolefully, murmured that he couldn't bear to have Arthur go away, and that he had nothing to look forward to except Christmas and that was only one day.
"Nothing to look forward to! Oh, Buff! Think of spring coming and the daffodils. And Etterick, and the puppies you haven't seen yet. And I'll tell you what. When Arthur comes, I shouldn't wonder if we had a sea-fight on the mill-pond—on rafts, you know."
Buff sat up, his grubby little handkerchief still clutched in his hand, tears on his lashes but in his eyes a light of hope.
"Rafts!" he said. He slid to the floor. "Rafts!" he repeated. There was dizzy magic in the word. Already, in thought, he was lashing spars of wood together.
Five minutes later Elizabeth, carrying a basket filled with fresh eggs, grapes, and sponge-cakes, was on her way to call on Mrs. Veitch, while at home Marget stood gazing, speechless with wrath, at the wreck Buff had made of her tidy stick-house.
When Elizabeth reached her destination and knocked, the door was opened by Mrs. Veitch's daughter Kate, who took her into the room and asked her to take a seat for a minute and she would come. Left alone, Elizabeth looked round the cherished room and noticed that dust lay thick on the sideboard that Mrs. Veitch had dusted so frequently and so proudly, and that the crochet antimacassars on the sofa hung all awry.
She put them tidy, pulled the tablecover even, straightened a picture and was wondering if she might dust the sideboard with a spare handkerchief she had in her coat (somehow it hurt her to see the dust) when her attention was caught by a photograph that hung on the wall—a family group of two girls and two boys.
She went forward to study it. That funny little girl with the pulled-back hair must be Kate she decided. She had not changed much, it was the same good, mild face. The other girl must be the married daughter in America. But it was the boys she was interested in. She had heard her father talk of Mrs. Veitch's sons, John and Hugh. John had been his mother's stand-by, a rock for her to lean on; and Hugh had been to them both a joy and pride.
Elizabeth, looking at the eager, clever face in the faded old picture, understood why, even after twenty years, her father still talked sometimes of Hugh Veitch, and always with that quick involuntary sigh that we give to the memory of those ardent souls so well equipped for the fight but for whom the drums ceased to beat before the battle had well begun.
John and his mother had pinched themselves to send Hugh to college, where he was doing brilliantly well, when he was seized with diphtheria and died. In a week his brother followed him, and for twenty years Mrs. Veitch and Kate had toiled on alone.
Elizabeth turned with a start as Kate came into the room. She looked round drearily. "This room hasna got a dust for days. I'm not a manager like ma mother. I can sew well enough, but I get fair baffled in the house when there's everything to do."
"Poor Kate! Tell me, how is your mother?"
"No' well at all. The doctor was in this morning, and he's coming up again later, but he says there is nothing he can do. She's just worn out, and can you wonder? Many a time I've been fair vexed to see her toilin' with lodgers; but you see we had just ma pay, and a woman's pay is no' much to keep a house on, and she wanted to make a few shillings extra. And, Miss Seton, d'ye know what she's been doing a' these years? Scraping and hoarding every penny she could, and laying it away, to pay ma passage to America. Ma sister Maggie's there, ye know, and when she's gone she says I'm to go to Maggie. A' these years she's toiled with this before her. She had such a spirit, she would never give in." Kate wiped her eyes with her apron. "Come in and see ma mother."
"Oh, I don't think so. She oughtn't to see anyone when she is so ill."
"The doctor says it makes no difference, and she'll be vexed no' to see you. I told her you were in. She had aye a notion of you."
"If you think I won't do her harm, I should love to see her," said Elizabeth, getting up; and Kate led the way to the kitchen. The fog had thickened, and the windows in the little eyrie of a kitchen glimmered coldly opaque. From far beneath came the sounds of the railway.
Mrs. Veitch lay high on her pillows, her busy hands folded. She had given in at last.
Elizabeth thought she was sleeping, but she opened her eyes, and, seeing her visitor, smiled slightly.
"Are ye collectin' the day?" she asked.
"No," Elizabeth said, leaning forward and speaking very gently. "I don't want any money to-day. I came to ask for you. I am so sorry you are ill."
Mrs. Veitch looked at her with that curious appraising look that very sick people sometimes give one.
"Ay. I'm aboot by wi' it noo, and I em no' vexed. I'm terrible wearied."
"You are very wearied now," Elizabeth said, stroking the work-roughened hands that lay so calmly on the counterpane—all her life Mrs. Veitch had been a woman of much self-control, and in illness the habit did not desert her—"you are very wearied now, but you will get a good rest and soon be your busy self again."
"Na, I've been wearied for years.... Ma man died forty years syne, an' I've had ma face agin the wind ever since. That last nicht he lookit at the fower bairns—wee Hugh was a baby in ma airms—and he says, 'Ye've aye been fell, Tibbie. Be fell noo.' Lyin' here, I'm wonderin' what ma life's been—juist a fecht to get the denner ready, and a fecht to get the tea ready, an' a terrible trauchle on the washin'-days. It vexes me to think I've done so little to help ither folk. I never had the time."
"Ah! but you're forgetting," said Elizabeth. "The people you helped remember. I have heard—oh! often—from one and another how you did a sick neighbour's washing, and gave a hot meal to children whose mothers had to work out, and carried comfort to people in want. Every step your tired feet took on those errands is known to God."
The sick woman hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes had closed again, and she had fallen into the fitful sleep of weakness.
Elizabeth sat and looked at the old face, with its stern, worn lines. Here was a woman who had lived her hard, upright life, with no soft sayings and couthy ways, and she was dying as she had lived, "uncheered and undepressed" by the world's thoughts of her.
The fog crept close to the window.
Kate put the dishes she had washed into the press. The London express rushed past on its daily journey. The familiar sound struck on the dim ear, and Mrs. Veitch asked, "Is that ma denner awa' by?"
Kate wiped her eyes. The time-honoured jest hurt her to-day.
"Poor mother!" she said. "She's aye that comical."
"When I was a lassie," said Mrs. Veitch, "there was twae things I had a terrible notion of—a gig, an' a gairden wi' berries. Ma mither said, 'Bode for a silk goon and ye'll get a sleeve o't,' and Alec said, 'Bide a wee, lassie, an I'll get ye them baith.' Ay, but, Alec ma man, ye've been in yer grave this forty year, an' I've been faur frae gairdens."
The tired mind was wandering back to the beginning of things. She plucked at the trimming on the sleeve of her night-dress.
"I made this goon when I was a lassie for ma marriage. They ca'ed this 'flowering.' I mind fine sittin' sewin' it on simmer efternunes, wi' my mither makin' the tea. Scones an' new-kirned butter an' skim-milk