And still neither said a word, each knew so
well what was in the other's thoughts, so eloquently they spoke in
silence, 'Mother, I am loath to let you go,' and 'Oh my daughter,
now that my time is near, I wish you werena quite so fond of me.'
But when the daughter had slipped away my mother would grip my hand
and cry, 'I leave her to you; you see how she has sown, it will
depend on you how she is to reap.' And I made promises, but I
suppose neither of us saw that she had already reaped.
In the night my mother might waken and sit up in bed, confused by
what she saw. While she slept, six decades or more had rolled back
and she was again in her girlhood; suddenly recalled from it she
was dizzy, as with the rush of the years. How had she come into
this room? When she went to bed last night, after preparing her
father's supper, there had been a dresser at the window: what had
become of the salt-bucket, the meal-tub, the hams that should be
hanging from the rafters? There were no rafters; it was a papered
ceiling. She had often heard of open beds, but how came she to be
lying in one? To fathom these things she would try to spring out
of bed and be startled to find it a labour, as if she had been
taken ill in the night. Hearing her move I might knock on the wall
that separated us, this being a sign, prearranged between us, that
I was near by, and so all was well, but sometimes the knocking
seemed to belong to the past, and she would cry, 'That is my father
chapping at the door, I maun rise and let him in.
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