Miss Macnaughtan was almost hypersensitive to criticism.  Her intense desire to do right and to serve her fellow-beings animated her whole life, and it seemed to her rather hard to be found fault with.  Indeed, she had not many faults, and the defects of her character were mostly temperamental.

As a girl she was unpunctual, and subject to fits of indecision when it seemed impossible for her to make up her mind one way or the other.  The inconvenience caused by her frequent changes of times and plans was probably not realised by her.  Later in life, when she lived so much alone, she did not always see that difficulties which appeared nothing to her might be almost insuperable to other people, and that in houses where there are several members of a family to be considered, no individual can be quite as free to carry out his own plans as a person who is independent of family ties.  But when one remembered how splendidly she always responded to any claim on her own kindness one forgave her for being a little exacting.

Perhaps Miss Macnaughtan’s greatest handicap in life was her immense capacity for suffering—­suffering poignantly, unbearably, not only for her own sorrows but for the sorrows of others.  Only those who appealed to her in trouble knew the depth of her sympathy, and how absolutely she shared the burden of the grief.  But perhaps they did not always know how she agonised over their misfortunes, and at what price her sympathy was given.

[Page Heading:  RELIGIOUS VIEWS]

My aunt was a passionately religious woman.  Her faith was the inspiration of her whole life, and it is safe to say that from the smallest to the greatest things there was never a struggle between conscience and inclination in which conscience was not victorious.  As she grew older, I fancy that she became a less orthodox member of the Church of England, to which she belonged, but her love for Christ and for His people never wavered.

As each Sunday came round during her last illness, when she could not go to church, she used to say to a very dear sister, “Now, J., we must have our little service.”  Then the bedroom door was left ajar, and her sister would go down to the drawing-room and play the simple hymns they had sung together in childhood.  And on the last Sunday, the day before her death, when the invalid lay in a stupor and seemed scarcely conscious, that same dear sister played the old hymns once more, and as the sound floated up to the room above those who watched there saw a gleam of pleasure on the dying woman’s face.

My aunt had no fear of death.  There had been a time, some weeks before the end, when her feet had wandered very close to the waters which divide us from the unknown shore, and she told her sisters afterwards that she had almost seemed to see over to the “other side,” and that so many of those she loved were waiting for her, and saying, “Come over to us, Sally.  We are all here to welcome you.”