"
"Well, you've got started, Miss Birdseye," Doctor Prance remarked, with
raised eyebrows, protesting dryly but kindly, and putting forward, with
an air as if, after all, it didn't matter much, an authority that had
been superseded. The manner in which this competent little woman
indulged her patient showed sufficiently that the good lady was sinking
fast.
"We will think of you always, and your name will be sacred to us, and
that will teach us singleness and devotion," Verena went on, in the same
tone, still not meeting Ransom's eyes again, and speaking as if she were
trying now to stop herself, to tie herself by a vow.
"Well, it's the thing you and Olive have given your lives to that has
absorbed me most, of late years. I did want to see justice done--to us.
I haven't seen it, but you will. And Olive will. Where is she--why isn't
she near me, to bid me farewell? And Mr. Ransom will--and he will be
proud to have helped."
"Oh, mercy, mercy!" cried Verena, burying her head in Miss Birdseye's
lap.
"You are not mistaken if you think I desire above all things that your
weakness, your generosity, should be protected," Ransom said, rather
ambiguously, but with pointed respectfulness. "I shall remember you as
an example of what women are capable of," he added; and he had no
subsequent compunctions for the speech, for he thought poor Miss
Birdseye, for all her absence of profile, essentially feminine.
A kind of frantic moan from Olive Chancellor responded to these words,
which had evidently struck her as an insolent sarcasm; and at the same
moment Doctor Prance sent Ransom a glance which was an adjuration to
depart.
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