There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'
'But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you don't see it?'
'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were any such thing there?'
'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her - 'it's gone now - and why are you so unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at my side.'
'I am sorry, mother.'
'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'
With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return the daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops, looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face upon the bed.
Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,
'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go home again?'
'Yes, mother, yes.'