"Doss, what on earth are you doing? Have you gone crazy?"
"No," said Valancy. She meant to say it defiantly, but habit was too strong for her. She said it deprecatingly. "I - I just made up my mind to cut this bush down. It is no good. It never blooms - never will bloom."
"That is no reason for destroying it," said Mrs. Frederick sternly. "It was a beautiful bush and quite ornamental. You have made a sorry-looking thing of it."
"Rose trees should BLOOM," said Valancy a little obstinately.
"Don't argue with ME, Doss. Clear up that mess and leave the bush alone. I don't know what Georgiana will say when she sees how you have hacked it to pieces. Really, I'm surprised at you. And to do it without consulting ME!"
"The bush is mine," muttered Valancy.
"What's that? What did you say, Doss?"
"I only said the bush was mine," repeated Valancy humbly.
Mrs. Frederick turned without a word and marched back into the house. The mischief was done now. Valancy knew she had offended her mother deeply and would not be spoken to or noticed in any way for two or three days. Cousin Stickles would see to Valancy's bringing-up but Mrs. Frederick would preserve the stony silence of outraged majesty.
Valancy sighed and put away her garden knife, hanging it precisely on its precise nail in the tool-shop. She cleared away the several branches and swept up the leaves. Her lips twitched as she looked at the straggling bush. It had an odd resemblance to its shaken, scrawny donor, little Cousin Georgiana herself.
"I certainly have made an awful-looking thing of it," thought Valancy.
But she did not feel repentant - only sorry she had offended her mother. Things would be so uncomfortable until she was forgiven. Mrs. Frederick was one of those women who can make their anger felt all over a house. Walls and doors are no protection from it.
"You'd better go uptown and git the mail," said Cousin Stickles, when Valancy went in. "_I_ can't go - I feel all sorter peaky and piny this spring. I want you to stop at the drugstore and git me a bottle of Redfern's Blood Bitters. There's nothing like Redfern's Bitters for building a body up. Cousin James says the Purple Pills are the best, but I know better. My poor dear husband took Redfern's Bitters right up to the day he died. Don't let them charge you more'n ninety cents. I kin git it for that at the Port. And what HAVE you been saying to your poor mother? Do you ever stop to think, Doss, that you kin only have one mother?"
"One is enough for me," thought Valancy undutifully, as she went uptown.
She got Cousin Stickles' bottle of bitters and then she went to the post-office and asked for her mail at the General Delivery. Her mother did not have a box. They got too little mail to bother with it. Valancy did not expect any mail, except the Christian Times, which was the only paper they took. They hardly ever got any letters. But Valancy rather liked to stand in the office and watch Mr. Carewe, the grey-bearded, Santa-Clausy old clerk, handing out letters to the lucky people who did get them. He did it with such a detached, impersonal, Jove-like air, as if it did not matter in the least to him what supernal joys or shattering horrors might be in those letters for the people to whom they were addressed. Letters had a fascination for Valancy, perhaps because she so seldom got any. In her Blue Castle exciting epistles, bound with silk and sealed with crimson, were always being brought to her by pages in livery of gold and blue, but in real life her only letters were occasional perfunctory notes from relatives or an advertising circular.
Consequently she was immensely surprised when Mr. Carewe, looking even more Jovian than usual, poked a letter out to her. Yes, it was addressed to her plainly, in a fierce, black hand: "Miss Valancy Stirling, Elm Street, Deerwood" - and the postmark was Montreal. Valancy picked it up with a little quickening of her breath. Montreal! It must be from Doctor Trent. He had remembered her, after all.
Valancy met Uncle Benjamin coming in as she was going out and was glad the letter was safely in her bag.
"What," said Uncle Benjamin, "is the difference between a donkey and a postage-stamp?"
"I don't know. What?" answered Valancy dutifully.
"One you lick with a stick and the other you stick with a lick. Ha, ha!"
Uncle Benjamin passed in, tremendously pleased with himself.
Cousin Stickles pounced on the Times when Valancy got home, but it did not occur to her to ask if there were any letters. Mrs. Frederick would have asked it, but Mrs. Frederick's lips at present were sealed. Valancy was glad of this. If her mother had asked if there were any letters Valancy would have had to admit there was. Then she would have had to let her mother and Cousin Stickles read the letter and all would be discovered.
Her heart acted strangely on the way upstairs, and she sat down by her window for a few minutes before opening her letter. She felt very guilty and deceitful. She had never before kept a letter secret from her mother. Every letter she had ever written or received had been read by Mrs. Frederick. That had never mattered. Valancy had never had anything to hide. But this DID matter. She could not have any one see this letter. But her fingers trembled with a consciousness of wickedness and unfilial conduct as she opened it - trembled a little, too, perhaps, with apprehension. She felt quite sure there was nothing seriously wrong with her heart but - one never knew.
Dr. Trent's letter was like himself - blunt, abrupt, concise, wasting no words. Dr. Trent never beat about the bush. "Dear Miss Sterling" - and then a page of black, positive writing. Valancy seemed to read it at a glance; she dropped it on her lap, her face ghost-white.
Dr. Trent told her that she had a very dangerous and fatal form of heart disease - angina pectoris - evidently complicated with an aneurism - whatever that was - and in the last stages. He said, without mincing matters, that nothing could be done for her. If she took great care of herself she might live a year - but she might also die at any moment - Dr. Trent never troubled himself about euphemisms. She must be careful to avoid all excitement and all severe muscular efforts. She must eat and drink moderately, she must never run, she must go upstairs and uphill with great care. Any sudden jolt or shock might be fatal. She was to get the prescription he enclosed filled and carry it with her always, taking a dose whenever her attacks came on. And he was hers truly, H. B. Trent.
Valancy sat for a long while by her window. Outside was a world drowned in the light of a spring afternoon - skies entrancingly blue, winds perfumed and free, lovely, soft, blue hazes at the end of every street. Over at the railway station a group of young girls was waiting for a train; she heard their gay laughter as they chattered and joked. The train roared in and roared out again. But none of these things had any reality. Nothing had any reality except the fact that she had only another year to live.
When she was tired of sitting at the window she went over and lay down on her bed, staring at the cracked, discoloured ceiling. The curious numbness that follows on a staggering blow possessed her. She did not feel anything except a boundless surprise and incredulity - behind which was the conviction that Dr. Trent knew his business and that she, Valancy Stirling, who had never lived, was about to die.
When the gong rang for supper Valancy got up and went downstairs mechanically, from force of habit. She wondered that she had been let alone so long. But of course her mother would not pay any attention to her just now. Valancy was thankful for this. She thought the quarrel over the rose-bush had been really, as Mrs. Frederick herself might have said, Providential. She could not eat anything, but both Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles thought this was because she was deservedly unhappy over her mother's attitude, and her lack of appetite was not commented on. Valancy forced herself to swallow a cup of tea and then sat and watched the others eat, with an odd feeling that years had passed since she had sat with them at the dinner-table. She found herself smiling inwardly to think what a commotion she could make if she chose. Let her merely tell them what was in Dr. Trent's letter and there would be as much fuss made as if - Valancy thought bitterly - they really cared two straws about her.