nd she chatted of
all the old familiar places where flowers grew, and of the old talks
they had had there, till Moses quite forgot himself; forgot that he was
in a sick room, till Aunt Roxy, warned by the deepening color on Mara's
cheeks, interposed her "nussing" authority, that she must do no more
that day.

Then Moses laid her down, and arranged her pillows so that she could
look out on the sea, and sat and read to her till it was time for her
afternoon nap; and when the evening shadows drew on, he marveled with
himself how the day had gone.

Many such there were, all that pleasant month of September, and he was
with her all the time, watching her wants and doing her
bidding,--reading over and over with a softened modulation her favorite
hymns and chapters, arranging her flowers, and bringing her home wild
bouquets from all her favorite wood-haunts, which made her sick-room
seem like some sylvan bower. Sally Kittridge was there too, almost every
day, with always some friendly offering or some helpful deed of
kindness, and sometimes they two together would keep guard over the
invalid while Miss Roxy went home to attend to some of her own more
peculiar concerns. Mara seemed to rule all around her with calm
sweetness and wisdom, speaking unconsciously only the speech of heaven,
talking of spiritual things, not in an excited rapture or wild ecstasy,
but with the sober certainty of waking bliss. She seemed like one of the
sweet friendly angels one reads of in the Old Testament, so lovingly
companionable, walking and talking, eating and drinking, with mortals,
yet ready at any unknown moment to ascend with the flame of some
sacrifice and be gone. There are those (a few at least) whose blessing
it has been to have kept for many days, in bonds of earthly fellowship,
a perfected spirit in whom the work of purifying love was wholly done,
who lived in calm victory over sin and sorrow and death, ready at any
moment to be called to the final mystery of joy.

Yet it must come at last, the moment when heaven claims its own, and it
came at last in the cottage on Orr's Island. There came a day when the
room so sacredly cheerful was hushed to a breathless stillness; the bed
was then all snowy white, and that soft still sealed face, the parted
waves of golden hair, the little hands folded over the white robe, all
had a sacred and wonderful calm, a rapture of repose that seemed to say
"it is done."

They who looked on her wondered;