‘What to me was most remarkable,’ wrote Mr. Clark afterwards, ‘was her perfect cheerfulness and happiness; thinking of everything and every one around her, and talking of the most common things, and doing it all in the light of Eternity; standing on the very brink of another world, and yet forgetting nothing, but thinking of almost everything in this.... It was at times even amusing, for there was no sadness in her perpetual sunshine.’
On Friday morning, the day after the consultation, Miss Tucker woke very early, and asked to have her desk, that she might write. This of course could not be allowed. Later in the same day Mr. Weitbrecht went in to see her, just after an interview with Dr. Clark, and she inquired, ‘What does the doctor say?’
Mr. Weitbrecht endeavoured to avoid giving any direct reply, speaking only of one symptom which the Doctor had named as encouraging. Then came the point-blank question:
‘Yes; but does he think I shall die, or recover?’
‘He cannot tell.’
Miss Tucker was not to be so put off. An answer she would have. ‘I am very deaf with the quinine,’ she said. ‘I can’t hear what you say. If he thinks I shall stay, do this!’—holding up her hand;—‘and if sinking, this!’—dropping it.
There was no choice left. Truth compelled Mr. Weitbrecht to lower gently his hand. ‘Whereupon,’ as Mr. Bateman relates, ‘a smile and an almost shout of joy escaped her.’
‘I am so glad!’ she exclaimed. ‘So glad to be dying in harness! And to think that I shall be no trouble to anybody!... It is too good to be true, that I am going Home.... The bowl is broken at the fountain!’ Then she repeated the simple verse beginning,
‘“And when I’m to die,
Receive me, I’ll cry,