The morning of the second broke without a cloud.  Blue jays flashed past my window; a bed of royal pansies opened to the sun, and the smell of the fresh, moist earth came up where Tip was digging in his little garden.

“Not feeling exactly like work to-day,” as I told my wife, I did not go to the office.  I asked her to come into the library and sit with me.  I remember that she had a pudding to bake, and refused at first; then yielded, laughing, and said that I must go without my dessert.  I thought it highly probable that I should go without my dessert.

I remember precisely how pretty she was that morning.  She wore a bright dress,—­blue, I think,—­and a white crocus in her hair; she had a dainty white apron tied on, “to cook in,” she said, and her pink nails were powdered with flour.  Her eyes laughed and twinkled at me.  I remember thinking how young she looked, and how unready for suffering.  I remember that she brought the baby in after a while, and that Tip came all muddy from the garden, dragging his tiny hoe over the carpet; that the window was open, and that, while we all sat there together, a little brown bird brought some twine and built a nest on an apple-bough just in sight.

I find it difficult to explain the anxiety which I felt, as the, morning wore on, that dinner should be punctually upon the table at half past twelve.  But I now understand perfectly, as I did not once, the old philosophy:  “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”

It was ironing-day, and our dinners were apt to be late upon ironing-days.  I concluded that, if the soup were punctual, and not too hot, I could leave myself ten or perhaps fifteen unoccupied minutes before one o’clock.  It strikes me as curious now, the gravity with which this thought underran the fever and pain and dread of the morning.

I fell to reading my hymn-book about twelve o’clock, and when Alison called me to dinner I did not remember to consult my watch.

The soup was good, though hot.  A grim Epicurean stolidity crept over me as I sat down before it.  A man had better make the most of his last chance at mock-turtle.  Fifteen minutes were enough to die in.

I am confident that I ate more rapidly than is consistent with consummate elegance.  I remember that Tip imitated me, and that Allis opened her eyes at me.  I recall distinctly the fact that I had passed my plate a second time.

I had passed my plate a second time, I say, and had just raised the spoon to my lips, when it fell from my palsied hand; for the little bronze clock upon the mantel struck one.

I sat with drawn breath and glared at it; at the relentless silver hands; at the fierce, and, as it seemed to me, living face of the Time on its top, who stooped and swung his scythe at me.

“I would like a very big white potato,” said Tip, breaking the solemn silence.

You may or may not believe me, but it is a fact that that is all which happened.