Читать книгу A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg - Douglas Amanda M. - Страница 5

The summer passed rapidly. Daffodil found many things to entertain her, but grandfather demanded much of her time. He took his morning walk with her hand in his, but he did not go as far as formerly. Then, on his return, he had a nap in his chair. He lost his appetite during the latter part of the season. In the afternoon he took a long nap. Daffodil read to him now, and he did not appear to notice her blunders.

"Father fails rapidly, I think," Mrs. Bradin said to her husband.

He shook his head with a slow, sympathetic movement.

"We shall miss him very much. And Dilly will feel it. I am sorry to have her know the mystery no child can understand."

"We won't go for a walk this morning, Dilly," he said one day in later August. "The air is very close. We will wait until evening."

"But you go to bed so early."

"Yes, I'm getting old," with his faint, sweet smile.

"But everybody says you must live to be a hundred. That's a whole century."

"Sometimes I feel as if it were two centuries since I began. But it has been a pleasant journey toward the last. I'm glad to have had you, Dilly."

"I'm glad, too," the child said with her bright smile.

"Now you may sing to me a little."

So she sang him to sleep. Then she went to wait on her grandmother. Her mother was sewing by the window in their sleeping-room.

"Go and look at grandfather," she said presently.

"He is still asleep. Mother, I wish you would show me that stitch I began yesterday."

So she sat down at her work.

Mrs. Bradin went to her father. His head had drooped a little forward. She placed her hand on his forehead, and drew a long quivering breath. The summons had come, peacefully, for him.

She was still standing there when her husband entered, and at a glance he knew what had happened.

"It is best so," he said.

Barbe was startled beyond measure. Latterly her thoughts had been revolving much about herself, and though she had remarked the slow alteration, she had put off the assumption of the great change. Somewhere in the winter – maybe spring, and here it was with the ripening of summer.

They carried him to his room and laid him tenderly on his bed. A long, well-used life it had been.

To Daffodil it was a profound mystery. No child could comprehend it. This was the journey grandfather had spoken of, that she had imagined going back to France.

"What is it, mother? How do people go to heaven?" she asked.

"Some day we will talk it all over, when you can understand better. We must all go sometime. And we shall see each other there."

"Then it isn't so bad as never seeing one again," and there was a great tremble in her voice.

"No, dear. And God knows about the best times. We must trust to that."

He looked so peaceful the day of the burial that Daffodil thought he must be simply asleep. She said good-by to him softly. There had been no tragedy about it, but a quiet, reverent passing away.

Still, they missed him very much. Barbe wanted to set away the chair that had been so much to him. She could not bear to see it empty.