Do you
guess what for?"
She shook her head feeling no curiosity.
"The time is short, Missy."
The living's instinct to fight against the acquiescence of the dying
prompted her to the utterance of a sharp "No."
"I want it all arranged and settled before it's too late. I sent him
to see if there was a missionary here."
She was leaning against the couch of robes, resting on the piled
support of the skins. In the pause after his words she slowly drew
herself upright, and with her mouth slightly open inhaled a deep
breath. Her eyes remained fixed on him, gleaming from the shadow of
her brows, and their expression, combined with the amaze of the dropped
underlip, gave her a look of wild attention.
"Why?" she said. The word came obstructed and she repeated it.
"I want you to marry David here to-night."
The doctor's watch on a box at the bed head ticked loudly in the
silence. They looked at each other unconscious of the length of the
pause. Death on the one hand, life pressing for its due on the other,
were the only facts they recognized. Hostility, not to the man but to
the idea, drove the amazement from her face and hardened its softness
to stone.
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