“Milly! we have got to stand by him--to keep up his heart----”
“I cannot stand--I cannot stand, I think I will die. Oh, doctor, doctor! do something, find out something! Couldn’t you do something if you were to try?”
“Milly, am I to go alone--the last time--to papa?”
“Put our blood into him,” cried Milly, holding up her small white wrists. “They do that sometimes. Take mine--oh, every drop!--and Grace’s too. Doctor, doctor! you could do something if you were to try.”
For weeks after, this cry rang in the good doctor’s ears. They both caught at the idea; even Grace, who had command of herself. How easy it seemed!--to take the young blood out of their veins and pour it, like new life, into his. Sometimes it is done in stories--why not, why not, in actual life? Their voices ran into a kind of clamour, imploring him. It was long before the impression made by this scene left the doctor’s mind and recollection. Nevertheless, that night both the girls stood by their father’s bedside quietly enough, making no scene, watching eagerly for any last word he might have to say to them. But how few of the dying have any last words to say! He opened his eyes, and smiled vaguely twice or thrice, as though all had been quite happy and simple around him--he had gone out of the region in which anxieties dwell. Perhaps he did not remember that he was leaving them helpless among strangers--or if he knew, the ebb of the wave had caught him and he could feel nothing but the last floating out to sea, the sound of the waters, the tide of the new life.
Left to themselves in such circumstances, the poor girls had no alternative but to be crushed altogether, or to rise into heroic fortitude; and happily Grace had strength enough for that better part. She dressed herself, when the dreadful morning came, in the only black frock her wardrobe contained, with the composure of a creature braced by the worst that could happen, and knowing now that whatever might come, nothing so terrible could fall on her again. The shock, instead of prostrating her as it did her sister, seemed to rally all her forces, and clear and strengthen every faculty. She had scarcely slept, notwithstanding the calming dose which the doctor in his pity had insisted upon administering to both. It procured for poor little Milly some hours of feverish unconsciousness, but with Grace it acted on the mind, not the body, numbing the pain but giving an unnatural and vivid force to all her faculties. Her brain seemed to be beset by thoughts; and first among them was a yearning sympathy and pity for her mother. The sudden shock of a curtly worded telegram would be so novel, so terrible, to that happy woman, who never all her life had known what great sorrow was, that her young daughter shuddered at the thought.