As Honor entered the sick-room, with pursed lips, a light leapt into the wasted, wrinkled countenance of the dying creature.  She raised herself slightly in bed, her lips parted, then shut tightly, and her face darkened.

Honor turned angrily to Mercy’s husband, who hung about impotently.  “Why did you let her run down so low?” she said.

“I didn’t know,” the old man stammered, taken aback by her presence even more than by her question.  “She was always a woman to say nothin’.”

Honor put him impatiently aside and examined the medicine bottle on the bedside table.

“Isn’t it time she took her dose?”

“I dessay.”

Honor snorted wrathfully.  “What’s the use of a man?” she inquired, as she carefully measured out the fluid and put it to her sister’s lips, which opened to receive it, and then closed tightly again.

“How is your wife feeling now?” Honor asked after a pause.

“How are you, now, Mercy?” asked the old man awkwardly.

The old woman shook her head.  “I’m a-goin’ fast, Jim,” she grumbled weakly, and a tear of self-pity trickled down her parchment cheek.

“What rubbidge she do talk!” cried Honor, sharply.  “Why d’ye stand there like a tailor’s dummy?  Why don’t you tell her to cheer up?”

“Cheer up, Mercy,” quavered the old man, hoarsely.

But Mercy groaned instead, and turned fretfully on her other side, with her face to the wall.

“I’m too old, I’m too old,” she moaned, “this is the end o’ me.”

“Did you ever hear the like?” Honor asked Jim, angrily, as she smoothed his wife’s pillow.  “She was always conceited about her age, settin’ herself up as the equals of her elders, and here am I, her elder sister, as carried her in my arms when I was five and she was two, still hale and strong, and with no mind for underground for many a day.  Nigh three times her age I was once, mind you, and now she has the imperence to talk of dyin’ before me.”

She took off her bonnet and shawl.  “Send one o’ the kids to tell my boy I’m stayin’ here,” she said, “and then just you get ’em all to bed—­there’s too much noise about the house.”

The children, who were orphaned grandchildren of the dying woman, were sent to bed, and then Jim himself was packed off to refresh himself for the next day’s labours, for the poor old fellow still doddered about the workshop.

The silence of the sick-room spread over the whole house.  About ten o’clock the doctor came again and instructed Honor how to alleviate the patient’s last hours.  All night long she sat watching her dying sister, hand and eye alert to anticipate every wish.  No word broke the awful stillness.

The first thing in the morning, Mercy’s married daughter, the only child of hers living in London, arrived to nurse her mother.  But Honor indignantly refused to be dispossessed.

“A nice daughter you are,” she said, “to leave your mother lay a day and a night without a sight o’ your ugly face.”