Between the paroxysms she kept up her keen interest in the life that went on about her.  Nothing escaped her sharp, alert eyes and ears.  This evening she lay spent on the crumpled pillows; she had had a bad spell in the afternoon and it had left her very weak.  In the dim light her extremely long face looked corpse-like already.  Her black hair lay in a heavy braid over the pillow and down the counterpane.  It was all that was left of her beauty, and she took a fierce joy in it.  Those long, glistening, sinuous tresses must be combed and braided every day, no matter what came.

A girl of fourteen was curled up on a chair at the head of the bed, with her head resting on the pillow.  The boy at the window was her half-brother; but, between Christopher Holland and Eunice Carr, not the slightest resemblance existed.

Presently the sibilant silence was broken by a low, half-strangled sob.  The sick woman, who had been watching a white evening star through the cherry boughs, turned impatiently at the sound.

“I wish you’d get over that, Eunice,” she said sharply.  “I don’t want any one crying over me until I’m dead; and then you’ll have plenty else to do, most likely.  If it wasn’t for Christopher I wouldn’t be anyways unwilling to die.  When one has had such a life as I’ve had, there isn’t much in death to be afraid of.  Only, a body would like to go right off, and not die by inches, like this.  ’Tain’t fair!”

She snapped out the last sentence as if addressing some unseen, tyrannical presence; her voice, at least, had not weakened, but was as clear and incisive as ever.  The boy at the window stopped whistling, and the girl silently wiped her eyes on her faded gingham apron.

Naomi drew her own hair over her lips, and kissed it.

“You’ll never have hair like that, Eunice,” she said.  “It does seem most too pretty to bury, doesn’t it?  Mind you see that it is fixed nice when I’m laid out.  Comb it right up on my head and braid it there.”

A sound, such as might be wrung from a suffering animal, came from the girl, but at the same moment the door opened and a woman entered.

“Chris,” she said sharply, “you get right off for the cows, you lazy little scamp!  You knew right well you had to go for them, and here you’ve been idling, and me looking high and low for you.  Make haste now; it’s ridiculous late.”

The boy pulled in his head and scowled at his aunt, but he dared not disobey, and went out slowly with a sulky mutter.

His aunt subdued a movement, that might have developed into a sound box on his ears, with a rather frightened glance at the bed.  Naomi Holland was spent and dying, but her temper was still a thing to hold in dread, and her sister-in-law did not choose to rouse it by slapping Christopher.  To her and her co-nurse the spasms of rage, which the sick woman sometimes had, seemed to partake of the nature of devil possession.  The last one, only three days before, had been provoked by Christopher’s complaint of some real or fancied ill-treatment from his aunt, and the latter had no mind to bring on another.  She went over to the bed, and straightened the clothes.