‘If you please, mistress,’ said a withered
old female pauper, hideously ugly: putting her
head in at the door, ’Old Sally is a-going fast.’
‘Well, what’s that to me?’ angrily
demanded the matron. ’I can’t keep
her alive, can I?’
‘No, no, mistress,’ replied the old woman,
’nobody can; she’s far beyond the reach
of help. I’ve seen a many people die; little
babes and great strong men; and I know when death’s
a-coming, well enough. But she’s troubled
in her mind: and when the fits are not on her,—and
that’s not often, for she is dying very hard,—she
says she has got something to tell, which you must
hear. She’ll never die quiet till you come,
mistress.’
At this intelligence, the worthy Mrs. Corney muttered
a variety of invectives against old women who couldn’t
even die without purposely annoying their betters;
and, muffling herself in a thick shawl which she hastily
caught up, briefly requested Mr. Bumble to stay till
she came back, lest anything particular should occur.
Bidding the messenger walk fast, and not be all night
hobbling up the stairs, she followed her from the room
with a very ill grace, scolding all the way.
Mr. Bumble’s conduct on being left to himself,
was rather inexplicable. He opened the closet,
counted the teaspoons, weighed the sugar-tongs, closely
inspected a silver milk-pot to ascertain that it was
of the genuine metal, and, having satisfied his curiosity
on these points, put on his cocked hat corner-wise,
and danced with much gravity four distinct times round
the table.
Having gone through this very extraordinary performance,
he took off the cocked hat again, and, spreading himself
before the fire with his back towards it, seemed to
be mentally engaged in taking an exact inventory of
the furniture.
TREATS ON A VERY POOR SUBJECT. BUT IS A SHORT
ONE, AND MAY BE FOUND OF IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY
It was no unfit messenger of death, who had disturbed
the quiet of the matron’s room. Her body
was bent by age; her limbs trembled with palsy; her
face, distorted into a mumbling leer, resembled more
the grotesque shaping of some wild pencil, than the
work of Nature’s hand.
Alas! How few of Nature’s faces are left
alone to gladden us with their beauty! The cares,
and sorrows, and hungerings, of the world, change
them as they change hearts; and it is only when those
passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever,
that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven’s
surface clear. It is a common thing for the
countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid
state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression
of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look
of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow
again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood,
kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the
Angel even upon earth.
