“Mrs. Edson my dear, when Mr. Edson paid me the rent for these farther six months—­”

She gave a start and I felt her large eyes look at me, but I went on with it and with my needlework.

“—­I can’t say that I am quite sure I dated the receipt right.  Could you let me look at it?”

She laid her frozen cold hand upon mine and she looked through me when I was forced to look up from my needlework, but I had taken the precaution of having on my spectacles.

“I have no receipt” says she.

“Ah!  Then he has got it” I says in a careless way.  “It’s of no great consequence.  A receipt’s a receipt.”

From that time she always had hold of my hand when I could spare it which was generally only when I read to her, for of course she and me had our bits of needlework to plod at and neither of us was very handy at those little things, though I am still rather proud of my share in them too considering.  And though she took to all I read to her, I used to fancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all to His gentle compassion for us poor women and to His young life and to how His mother was proud of Him and treasured His sayings in her heart.  She had a grateful look in her eyes that never never never will be out of mine until they are closed in my last sleep, and when I chanced to look at her without thinking of it I would always meet that look, and she would often offer me her trembling lip to kiss, much more like a little affectionate half broken-hearted child than ever I can imagine any grown person.

One time the trembling of this poor lip was so strong and her tears ran down so fast that I thought she was going to tell me all her woe, so I takes her two hands in mine and I says: 

“No my dear not now, you had best not try to do it now.  Wait for better times when you have got over this and are strong, and then you shall tell me whatever you will.  Shall it be agreed?”

With our hands still joined she nodded her head many times, and she lifted my hands and put them to her lips and to her bosom.  “Only one word now my dear” I says.  “Is there any one?”

She looked inquiringly “Any one?”

“That I can go to?”

She shook her head.

“No one that I can bring?”

She shook her head.

“No one is wanted by me my dear.  Now that may be considered past and gone.”

Not much more than a week afterwards—­for this was far on in the time of our being so together—­I was bending over at her bedside with my ear down to her lips, by turns listening for her breath and looking for a sign of life in her face.  At last it came in a solemn way—­not in a flash but like a kind of pale faint light brought very slow to the face.

She said something to me that had no sound in it, but I saw she asked me: 

“Is this death?”

And I says: