“I don’t think I’m pretty and I know I’m not a dear,” said Priscilla, quite vexed.

“Ain’t you then, deary,” murmured Mrs. Jones soothingly.

Priscilla saw it was no use arguing, and taking up the Bible that always lay on the table by the bed began to read aloud.  She read and read till both were quieted,—­Mrs. Jones into an evidently sweet sleep, she herself into peace.  Then she left off and sat for some time watching the old lady, the open Bible in-her lap, her soul filled with calm words and consolations, wondering what it could be like being so near death.  Must it not be beautiful, thought Priscilla, to slip away so quietly in that sunny room, with no sound to break the peace but the ticking of the clock that marked off the last minutes, and outside the occasional footstep of a passer-by still hurrying on life’s business?  Wonderful to have done with everything, to have it all behind one, settled, lived through, endured.  The troublous joys as well as the pains, all finished; the griefs and the stinging happinesses, all alike lived down; and now evening, and sleep.  In the few days Priscilla had known her the old lady had drawn visibly nearer death.  Lying there on the pillow, so little and light that she hardly pressed it down at all, she looked very near it indeed.  And how kind Death was, rubbing away the traces of what must have been a sordid existence, set about years back with the usual coarse pleasures and selfish hopes,—­how kind Death was, letting all there was of spirit shine out so sweetly at the end.  There was an enlarged photograph of Mrs. Jones and her husband over the fireplace, a photograph taken for their silver wedding; she must have been about forty-five; how kind Death was, thought Priscilla, looking from the picture to the figure on the bed.  She sighed a little, and got up.  Life lay before her, an endless ladder up each of whose steep rungs she would have to clamber; in every sort of weather she would have to clamber, getting more battered, more blistered with every rung....  She looked wistfully at the figure on the bed, and sighed a little.  Then she crept out, and softly shut the door.

She walked home lost in thought.  As she was going up the hill to her cottage Fritzing suddenly emerged from it and indulged in movements so strange and complicated that they looked like nothing less than a desperate dancing on the doorstep.  Priscilla walked faster, staring in astonishment.  He made strange gestures, his face was pale, his hair rubbed up into a kind of infuriated mop.

“Why, what in the world—­” began the amazed Priscilla, as soon as she was near enough.

“Ma’am, I’ve been robbed,” shouted Fritzing; and all Symford might have heard if it had happened to be listening.

“Robbed?” repeated Priscilla.  “What of?”

“Of all my money, ma’am.  Of all I had—­of all we had—­to live on.”

“Nonsense, Fritzi,” said Priscilla; but she did turn a little paler.  “Don’t let us stand out here,” she added; and she got him in and shut the street door.