“I do not agree with you, doctor,” she said, shaking her head. “The wrench was defeenitive.” Miss Bethune’s nationality betrayed itself in a great breadth of vowels, as well as in here and there a word or two. “It was a cut like death: and you do not call calm unnatural that comes after death, after long years?” “It’s different--it’s different,” the doctor said. “Ay, so it is,” she said, answering as it were her own question. And there was a pause. When two persons of middle age discuss such questions, there is a world lying behind each full of experiences, which they recognise instinctively, however completely unaware they may be of each other’s case. “But here is Dora ready for her walk, and me doing nothing but haver,” cried Miss Bethune, disappearing into the next room. They might have been mother and daughter going out together in the gentle tranquillity of use and wont,--so common a thing!--and yet if the two had been mother and daughter, what a revolution in how many lives would have been made!--how different would the world have been for an entire circle of human souls! They were, in fact, nothing to each other--brought together, as we say, by chance, and as likely to be whirled apart again by those giddy combinations and dissolutions which the head goes round only to think of. For the present they walked closely together side by side, and talked of one subject which engrossed all their thoughts. “What does the doctor think? Oh, tell me, please, what the doctor thinks!” “How can he think anything, Dora, my dear? He has never seen your father since he was taken ill.” “Oh, Miss Bethune, but he knew him so well before. And I don’t ask you what he knows. He must think something. He must have an opinion. He always has an opinion, whatever case it may be.” “He thinks, my dear, that the fever must run its course. Now another week’s begun, we must just wait for the next critical moment. That is all, Dora, my darling, that is all that any man can say.” “Oh, that it would only come!” cried Dora passionately. “There is nothing so dreadful as waiting--nothing! However bad a thing is, if you only know it, not hanging always in suspense.” “Suspense means hope; it means possibility and life, and all that makes life sweet. Be patient, be patient, my bonnie dear.” Dora looked up into her friend’s face. “Were you ever as miserable as I am?” she said. Miss Bethune was thought grim by her acquaintances and there was a hardness in her, as those who knew her best were well aware; but at this question something ineffable came into her face. Her eyes filled with tears, her lips quivered with a smile. “My little child!” she said.