We all moved silently to the lee of the outer wall, so that our voices might not carry up to the sick woman lying there under the eaves, almost within hand reach.  “Yes, sir.”  “No, sir.”  “Yes, ma’am.”  This, and the constant, unforgettable supplication of his eyes, was all that came from him; yet he seemed loath to let us go, as though he thought we had some mysterious power to help him—­the magic, perhaps, of money, to those who have none.  Grateful at our promise of another doctor, a specialist, he yet seemed with his eyes to say that he knew that such were only embroideries of Fate.  And when we had wrung his hand and gone, we heard him coming after us:  His wife had said she would like to see us, please.  Would we come up?

An old woman and Mrs. Herd’s sister were in the sitting-room; they showed us to the crazy, narrow stairway.  Though we lived distant but four hundred yards of a crow’s flight, we had never seen Mrs. Herd before, for that is the way of things in this land of minding one’s own business—­a slight, dark, girlish-looking woman, almost quite refined away, and with those eyes of the dying, where the spirit is coming through, as it only does when it knows that all is over except just the passing.  She lay in a double bed, with clean white sheets.  A white-washed room, so low that the ceiling almost touched our heads, some flowers in a bowl, the small lattice window open.  Though it was hot in there, it was better far than the rooms of most families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much; for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness.  In her face, as in poor Herd’s, was that same strange mingling of resigned despair and almost eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint.  Yet, trying not to disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery:  What was the good, the kindness, in making this poor bird flutter still with hope against the bars, when fast prison had so surely closed in round her?  But what else could we do?  We could not give her those glib assurances that naive souls make so easily to others concerning their after state.

Secretly, I think, we knew that her philosophy of calm reality, that queer and unbidden growing tranquillity which precedes death, was nearer to our own belief, than would be any gilt-edged orthodoxy; but nevertheless (such is the strength of what is expected), we felt it dreadful that we could not console her with the ordinary presumptions.

“You mustn’t give up hope,” we kept on saying:  “The new doctor will do a lot for you; he’s a specialist—­a very clever man.”

And she kept on answering:  “Yes, sir.”  “Yes, ma’am.”  But still her eyes went on asking, as if there were something else she wanted.  And then to one of us came an inspiration: 

“You mustn’t let your husband worry about expense.  That will be all right.”

She smiled then, as if the chief cloud on her soul had been the thought of the arrears her illness and death would leave weighing on him with whom she had shared this bed ten years and more.  And with that smile warming the memory of those spirit-haunted eyes, we crept down-stairs again, and out into the fields.