The Splendid Fairing by Constance Holme — Read

But though Sarah had held to the telling of Simon, she seemed in no hurry to break the dismal news. All morning she clung to May, as if they drew together as a matter of course, and May was glad to have her, not only because she was old and needed help, but because of the tie between them which had never been loosed. It was true that they had seen little of each other of late years, but it had only needed the talk in the doctor's house to draw them together again. The dwelling upon a lost hope may sometimes make the impossible possible and the dead live, if only for a space. The two of them had recreated Geordie in the quiet room, so that his mother had seen him plain before her darkened eyes, and his sweetheart had felt his kisses on her lips.

So all morning they stayed together, even though they did not speak of him again, because while they were together the glamour persisted and the dream remained. Just as one name had robbed them that day, though they did not know it, so another name sweetened everything for them, and for a little space made them rich. Things might so easily have been as they wished that it seemed as if even now just a little determination might twist them into shape. In the ordinary course of events, and with ever such an ordinary share of luck, Geordie and May should have been married long ago, with a home of their own to offer the old folk at the last. Even now, so it seemed, Geordie might be somewhere in the street, in the midst of that crowd of healthy youth, sturdy manhood and wiry age. Instinctively, as they came out of each shop, they looked to find him the centre of some chaffing group, the laughing, handsome, witty centre, as he had always been. He would break away when he saw them to ask his old mother how she did, and suddenly the greatest and best of all happenings would have happened, and they would have heard the miracle of his speech.