Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/129

 write, an' he asked about you. La, she do make a fuss about the Captain," she added to a crony, in for a gossip.

Jeanet stole upstairs, paused outside the door with a strange disinclination to enter. She knocked twice with caught breath; no sound reached her from inside. She entered; the cheap coal had burnt out to slate and grey white ash; the shadows filled the room, accentuating the strange quiet. The Captain sat a little to one side with his chin sunk on his breast and his old hands folded on the closed book; the quill pen shone whitely on the floor where it had dropped to his feet. Some sudden spell of awe kept Jeanet from touching the silent figure, and checked the cry of "Captain" on her lips. She went out, fetched in the lamp from the bracket on the landing and turned it up to its full height gave one look, and uttered a long cry that brought them hurrying up from below, and woke the lodger's baby on the floor above.

And whilst they clustered round his chair and felt his heart and talked volubly of doctor and telegrams, Jeanet took the book reverently from under his hand, and hugging it to her breast burst into tears—to her alone it was of signification, had not his own always made a jest of it?

"He would get up, the pore gentleman, he was fair set on writin' in his book; I left 'im sittin' with the pen in 'is 'and," cried the girl.

When the ghastly details had been carried out and the Captain lay with a restful smile on his face, and sons and daughters had been and gone, and the undertaker's young man was talking it over in the kitchen, Jeanet stole with swollen lids and pinched features to the bedside of her best friend—to open the book. It had escaped every one's thought, but she had lain awake all night thinking of the wonderful tale it must hold, for the Captain, Bessy said, had sat with it upon his knee each day since her departure