'It's no use Robina's telling me that I must coax my mother to eat, as if I hadn't tried that'--the voice became shrill--'I've begged her, and prayed her, and reasoned with her.'
'No, no, Miss Macdonald--no, no,' said the doctor soothingly. 'You've done your best, we all understand that; it's Mistress Brown that's thinking of the situation in a wrong light; it's needful to be plain and to say that Mistress Macdonald's mind is affected.'
Robina Brown interposed with indignation and authority.
'My mother has always had her right mind; she's been losing her memory. All aged people lose their memories.'
The minister spoke with a meditative interest in a psychological phenomenon. 'Ay, she's been losing it backwards; she forgot who we were first, and remembered us all as little children; then she forgot us and your father altogether. Latterly she's been living back in the days when her father and mother were living at Kelsey Farm. It's strange to hear her talk. There's not, as far as I know, another being on this wide earth of all those that came and went to Kelsey Farm that is alive now.'
Miss Macdonald wiped her eyes; her voice shook as she spoke; the nervousness of fatigue and anxiety accentuated her grief. 'She was asking me how much butter we made in the dairy to-day, and asking if the curly cow had her calf, and what Jeanie Trim was doing.'
'Who was Jeanie Trim?' asked the minister.
'How should I know? I suppose she was one of the Kelsey servants.'
'Curious,' ejaculated the minister. 'This Jeanie will have grown old and died, perhaps, forty years ago, and my aunt's speaking of her as if she was a young thing at work in the next room!'
'And what did you say to Mistress Macdonald?' the doctor asked, with a cheerful purpose in his tone.
'I explained to her that her poor head was wandering.'
'Nay, now, but, Miss Macdonald, I'm thinking if I were you I would tell her that the curly cow had her calf.'
'I never'--tearfully--'told my mother a falsehood in my life, except when I was a very little girl, and then'--Miss Macdonald paused to wipe her eyes--'she spoke to me so beautifully out of the Bible about it.'
The married sister chimed in mournfully, 'How often have I heard my mother say that not one of her children had ever told her a lie!'