For her part, she could not
have stood it another day.
The days slipped into weeks, and the weeks into months. Jane took the
entire care of her father, except that she hired a woman to come in for
an hour or two once or twice a week, when she herself was obliged to
leave the house.
The owner of the blue-gray eyes did not belie the determination of his
chin, but made a valiant effort to establish himself on the basis of the
old intimacy; but Miss Pendergast held herself sternly aloof, and
refused to listen to him. In a year he had left town--but it was not his
fault that he was obliged to go away alone, as Jane Pendergast well
knew.
One by one the years passed. Twenty had gone by now since the small boy
came with his fateful summons that June day. Jane was fifty-five now, a
thin-faced, stoop-shouldered, tired woman--but a woman to whom release
from this constant care was soon to come, for she was not yet fifty-six
when her father died.
All the children and some of the grandchildren came to the funeral. In
the evening the family, with the exception of Jane, gathered in the
sitting-room and discussed the future, while upstairs the woman whose
fate was most concerned laid herself wearily in bed with almost a pang
that she need not now first be doubly sure that doors were locked and
spoons were counted.
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