There was no merry gossip and laughter now, there were no love stories, no monologues with pauses for smiles. Mary Ann felt that a careless word or look would be enough to loosen that frail hold on life. When the doctor came, he found his patient in charge of a stout woman in a fresh linen dress, whose self-command was so perfect that he did not waste many words in softening the opinion for which she followed him to the door. "Your mother's age is against her," he said. "The bronchitis in itself is not alarming, but her heart is weak, and I fear you must not expect her recovery." He knew at once that she refused to accept his verdict, though she only said, "I'd like to telegraph for our doctor at home, if you don't mind." When Dr. Corbett came, he confirmed the opinion. "The bronchitis is no worse than usual," he added, "the treatment has been the same; but she seems to have lost her grip." "There's no reason why she shouldn't catch a hold of it again," said poor Mary Ann, choking down her agony with the thought that she must return immediately to her mother's room. "I don't quite understand it," the doctor said, with a questioning look. "The nursing--that's been good? Dr. Black tells me so." "Yes, Jane and Selina are both good nurses, better'n what I am, if it wasn't that Ma's used to me." "And there's no obstacle to her recovery that you know of?" Mary Ann shook her head. "Well, Miss Mary Ann, we must just conclude that it's the natural wearing out of a good machine. And we'll do what we can." When Mary Ann went back to her mother's room, she found her a little roused from the stupor in which she had been lying. The visit of her own doctor, the accustomed tendance, had touched some spring that set old wheels running. With the clairvoyance love so often gives to the sick-nurse, Mary Ann knew that she had something to say to her. She sat by the bed and waited. A fluttering whisper came at last. "Did you see Jane's hands?" Mary Ann's mind, seeking desperately for a clue, flashed from the stains on her sister's hands, which she had vaguely set down to black currant jelly, to the acid smell in the kitchen--to the black sewing--to the forgotten shock of a year ago. "They asked me where I'd like to lie--beside Pa or in the cemetery in town." "It's their forehandedness, Ma. I never did know such a forehanded pair. Talk about meeting trouble half way--Selina'n'Jane don't wait for it to start out at all." "Selina read out of the paper that bronchitis was nearly always fatal after seventy." "Well, now, what will those papers say next? Do you know what I read out of our own _Advertiser_ the other day? That every woman over thirty has had at least one offer of marriage. Now, that's a lie, for I never had an offer in my life. I'm kind of glad I didn't, Ma, for I suppose I'd have took it; and you and me do have an awfully good time together, don't we?"