There was a long pause, during which Rebecca sat down by the bedside and timidly touched her aunt's hand, her heart swelling with tender pity at the gaunt face and closed eyes.
"I was dreadful ashamed to have you graduate in cheesecloth, Rebecca, but I couldn't help it no-how. You'll hear the reason some time, and know I tried to make it up to ye. I'm afraid you was a laughin'-stock!"
"No," Rebecca answered. "Ever so many people said our dresses were the very prettiest; they looked like soft lace. You're not to be anxious about anything. Here I am all grown up and graduated,--number three in a class of twenty-two, aunt Miranda,--and good positions offered me already.
Look at me, big and strong and young, all ready to go into the world and show what you and aunt Jane have done for me. If you want me near, I'll take the Edgewood school, so that I can be here nights and Sundays to help; and if you get better, then I'll go to Augusta,--for that's a hundred dollars more, with music lessons and other things beside."
"You listen to me," said Miranda quaveringly.
"Take the best place, regardless o' my sickness.
I'd like to live long enough to know you'd paid off that mortgage, but I guess I shan't."
Here she ceased abruptly, having talked more than she had for weeks; and Rebecca stole out of the room, to cry by herself and wonder if old age must be so grim, so hard, so unchastened and unsweetened, as it slipped into the valley of the shadow.