But the only news now was of a very fragmentary kind; she had drunk
something; she had slept a little; she seemed quieter. In the same way,
Dr. Lesage confined himself to talking about details, save once when
he volunteered the information that he had just been called in to
ascertain, by severing a vein in the wrist, that an old lady of
eighty-five was really dead. She had a horror of being buried alive.
"It is a horror," he remarked, "that we generally find in the very old,
and seldom in the young." They both expressed their interest in what he
told them; it seemed to them very strange. Another strange thing about
the day was that the luncheon was forgotten by all of them until it was
late in the afternoon, and then Mrs. Chailey waited on them, and looked
strange too, because she wore a stiff print dress, and her sleeves were
rolled up above her elbows. She seemed as oblivious of her appearance,
however, as if she had been called out of her bed by a midnight alarm
of fire, and she had forgotten, too, her reserve and her composure; she
talked to them quite familiarly as if she had nursed them and held them
naked on her knee. She assured them over and over again that it was
their duty to eat.
The afternoon, being thus shortened, passed more quickly than they
expected. Once Mrs. Flushing opened the door, but on seeing them shut it
again quickly; once Helen came down to fetch something, but she stopped
as she left the room to look at a letter addressed to her.
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