“Yes, Mary,” Hannah said.
“But I can assure you of this, Poll. I have very few thoughts indeed and none of’em are worth your minding about.”
“Is there something perhaps I should be hearing?” Catherine asked.
They were silent a moment. “Nothing, Mama,” Andrew said. “Just a digression. I’d tell you if it was important.”
“You were about to continue, with what the doctor told you.”
“Yes I was. I will. He told me a number of other things and I can-assure-everybody-that such as they are, at least they’re some kind of cold comfort.”
Mary met his eyes.
“He said that if there had to be such an accident, this was pretty certainly the best way. That with such a thing, a concussion, he might quite possibly have been left a hopeless imbecile.”
“Oh, Andrew,” Mary burst out.
“The rest of his life, and that could have been another forty years as easily as not. Or maybe only a semi-invalid, laid up just now and then, with terrific recurrent headaches, or spells of amnesia, of feeble-mindedness. Those are the things that didn’t happen, Mary,” he told her desperately. “I think I’d just better get them over and done with right now.”
“Yes,” she said through her hands. “Yes, you had. Go on, Andrew. Get it over.”
“He pointed out what would have happened if he’d stayed conscious, if he hadn’t been thrown clear of the auto. Going fast, hopelessly out of control, up that eight-foot embankment and then down. He’d have been crushed, Mary. Horribly mangled. If he’d died it would have been slowly and agonizingly. If he’d lived, he’d have probably been a hopeless cripple.”
