"Emily—my dear, dear sister!" he exclaimed, as he pressed his lips warmly upon her cheek.
"Dear Robert, you are come! I am glad, but there now, dear Robert—there!—Release me now."
Shu breathed more freely, freed from his embrace, and he then gazed upon her with a painful sort of pleasure—her look was so clear, so dazzling, so spiritual, so unnaturally life-like.
"Sit by me," she said. He drew a low bench, and while he took his seat upon it, Katharine left the room. Emily put her hand into that of her brother, and looked into his face without speaking for several minutes. His voice, too, was husky when he spoke, so that, when his cousin had returned to the apartment, though all feelings between them had been perfectly understood, but few words had been said.
"Sit closer, brother—closer," she said to him, fondly, and motioned him to draw the bench beside her. He did so, and in her feeble tones many were the questions which the dying girl addressed to her companion. All the domestic associations of her home on the Santee—the home of her childhood and its pleasures, when she had hopes and dreams of the future, and disease had not yet shown itself upon her system. To these questions his answers were made with difficulty; many things had occurred, since her departure, which would have been too trying for her to hear. She found his replies unsatisfactory, therefore, and she pressed them almost reproachfully—
"And you have told me nothing of old mauma,[1] Robert: is she not well? does she not miss me? did she not wish to come? And Frill, the pointer—the poor dog—I wonder who feeds him now. I wish you could have brought mauma with you, Robert—I should like to have her attend on me, she knows my ways and wishes so much better than anybody else. I should not want her long."
And though she concluded her desire with a reference to her approaching fate, the sigh which followed was inaudible to her brother.
- ↑ Probably a corruption of mamma, an affection term of endearment which the southern child usually addresses to its negro nurse.
