Very shortly after the illness above-mentioned, my mother went up to town, whither I was soon to follow her, for now the spring had arrived, and it was time to prepare our new home.  How eagerly we had looked forward to taking possession; how we had talked over our life together and knitted on the new one we anticipated to the old one we remembered; how we had planned out Mabel’s training and arranged the duties that should fall to the share of each!  Day-dreams, that never were to be realised!

But a brief space had passed since my mother’s arrival in town, when I received a telegram from my brother, stating that she was dangerously ill, and summoning me at once to her bedside.  As swiftly as express train could carry me to London I was there, and found my darling in bed, prostrate, the doctor only giving her three days to live.  One moment’s sight I caught of her face, drawn and haggard; then as she saw me it all changed into delight; “At last! now I can rest.”

The brave spirit had at length broken down, never again to rise; the action of her heart had failed, the valves no longer performed their duty, and the bluish shade of forehead and neck told that the blood was no longer sent pure and vivifying through the arteries.  But her death was not as near as the doctor had feared; “I do not think she can live four-and-twenty hours,” he said to me, after I had been with her for two days.  I told her his verdict, but it moved her little; “I do not feel that I am going to die just yet,” she said resolutely, and she was right.  There was an attack of fearful prostration, a very wrestling with death, and then the grim shadow drew backwards, and she struggled back to life.  Soon, as is usual in cases of such disease, dropsy intervened, with all its weariness of discomfort, and for week after week her long martyrdom dragged on.  I nursed her night and day, with a very desperation of tenderness, for now fate had touched the thing that was dearest to me in life.  A second horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity and my love beat back the death-stroke.  She did not wish to die—­the love of life was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we kept the foe at bay.

At this period, after eighteen months of abstention, and for the last time, I took the Sacrament.  This statement will seem strange to my readers, but the matter happened in this wise: 

My dear mother had an intense longing to take it, but absolutely refused to do so unless I partook of it with her.

“If it be necessary to salvation,” she persisted doggedly, “I will not take it if darling Annie is to be shut out.  I would rather be lost with her than saved without her.”  In vain I urged that I could not take it without telling the officiating clergyman of my heresy, and that under such circumstances the clergyman would be sure to refuse to administer to me.  She insisted that she could not die happy if she did not take it with me.