She took great pains to make the holiday dinner unusually festive, decorated the table, and put on her prettiest evening gown. There were very few boarders left in the house on this day, and the group that gathered about the big turkey was like one large family. Billy carved, and Susan with two paper candle-shades pinned above her ears, like enormous rosettes, was more like her old silly merry self than these people who loved her had seen her for years.
It was nearly eight o'clock when Mrs. Lancaster, pushing back an untasted piece of mince pie, turned to Susan a strangely flushed and swollen face, and said thickly: "Air--I think I must--air!"
She went out of the dining-room, and they heard her open the street door, in the hall. A moment later Virginia said "Mama!" in so sharp a tone that the others were instantly silenced, and vaguely alarmed.
"Hark!" said Virginia, "I thought Mama called!" Susan, after a half- minute of nervous silence, suddenly jumped up and ran after her aunt.
She never forgot the dark hall, and the sensation when her foot struck something soft and inert that lay in the doorway. Susan gave a great cry of fright as she knelt down, and discovered it to be her aunt.
Confusion followed. There was a great uprising of voices in the dining-room, chairs grated on the floor. Someone lighted the hall gas, and Susan found a dozen hands ready to help her raise Mrs. Lancaster from the floor.
"She's just fainted!" Susan said, but already with a premonition that it was no mere faint.
"We'd better have a doctor though---" she heard Billy say, as they carried her aunt in to the dining-room couch. Mrs. Lancaster's breath was coming short and heavy, her eyes were shut, her face dark with blood.
"Oh, why did we let Joe go home!" Mary Lou burst out hysterically.
Her mother evidently caught the word, for she opened her eyes and whispered to Susan, with an effort: "Georgia--good, good man--my love---"
"You feel better, don't you, darling?" Susan asked, in a voice rich with love and tenderness.
"Oh, yes!" her aunt whispered, earnestly, watching her with the unwavering gaze of a child.
"Of course she's better--You're all right, aren't you?" said a dozen voices. "She fainted away!--Didn't you hear her fall?--I didn't hear a thing!--Well, you fainted, didn't you?--You felt faint, didn't you?"
"Air---" said Mrs. Lancaster, in a thickened, deep voice. Her eyes moved distressedly from one face to another, and as Virginia began to unfasten the pin at her throat, she added tenderly, "Don't prick yourself, Bootsy!"