"I am not afraid," she said. "I have just been vaccinated, and there was
already a good scar on my arm; look!" and she pushed back her sleeve and
showed her round, white arm with the mark upon it.
Guy did not oppose her after that, but let her do what she liked, and
when, an hour later, the doctor came he found his recent visitor sitting
on Julia's bed, with Julia's head lying against her bosom and Julia
herself asleep. Some word which sounded very much like "thunderation"
escaped his lips, but he said no more, for he saw in the sleeping
woman's face a look he never mistook. It was death, and ten minutes
after he entered the room Julia Thornton lay dead in Daisy's arms.
There was a moment or so of half-consciousness, during which they caught
the words. "So kind in you; it makes me easier; be good to the children;
one is called for you, but Guy loved me, too. Good-by. I am going to
Jesus."
That was the last she ever spoke, and a moment after she was gone. In
his fear lest the facts should be known to his guests, the host insisted
that the body should be removed under cover of the night, and as Guy
knew the railway officials would object to taking it on any train, there
was no alternative except to bury it in town, and so before the morning
broke there was brought up to the room a closely sealed coffin and box,
and Daisy helped lay Julia in her last bed, and put a white flower in
her hair and folded her hands upon her bosom, and then watched from the
window the little procession which followed the body out to the
cemetery, where, in the stillness of the coming day, they buried it,
together with everything which had been used about the bed, Daisy's
party dress included; and when at last the full morning broke, with stir
and life in the hotel, all was empty and still in the fumigated chamber
of death, and in the adjoining room, clad in a simple white wrapper,
with a blue ribbon in her hair, Daisy sat with Guy's little boy on her
lap and her namesake at her side, amusing them as best she could and
telling them their mamma had gone to live with Jesus.
"Who'll be our mamma now? We must have one. Will oo?" little Daisy
asked, as she hung about the neck of her new friend.
She knew it was Miss McDolly, her "sake-name," and in her delight at
seeing her and her admiration of her great beauty, she forgot in part
the dead mamma on whose grave the summer sun was shining.
The Thorntons left the hotel that day and went back to the house in
Cuylerville, which had been closed for a few weeks, Miss Frances being
away with some friends in Connecticut. But she returned at once when she
heard the dreadful news, and was there to receive her brother and his
motherless little ones. He told her of Daisy when he could trust himself
to talk at all, of Julia's sickness and death, and Miss Frances felt her
heart go out as it had never gone before toward the woman about whom
little Daisy talked constantly.