LOLLY WILLOWES
his side. The doctor looked grave as he came out of the bed-chamber, though within it Laura had heard him laughing with his old friend, and rallying him upon his nightcap. Everard had inflammation of the lungs, he told her; he would send for two nurses. They came, and their starched white aprons looked to her like unlettered tombstones. From the beginning her soul had crouched in apprehension, and indeed there was at no time much hope for the old man. When he was conscious he lay very peacefully, his face turned towards the window, watching the swallows fly restlessly from tree to tree. "It will be a hard winter," he said to Laura. "They're gathering early to go." And then: "Do you suppose they know where they're going?"
"I'm sure they do," she answered, thinking to comfort him. He regarded her shrewdly, smiled, and shook his head. "Then they're wiser than we."
When grandfather Henry, that masterful man, removed across the border, he was followed by a patriarchal train of manservants and maidservants, mares, geldings, and spaniels, vans full of household stuff, and slow country waggons loaded with nodding greenery. "I want
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