And one summer he begun to fail up faster and faster, and he got so tired he couldn’t hardly hold his head up, but he was scaret all the same. And one day he was layin’ on the bed, and lookin’ out o’ the east winder, and the sun kep’ a-shinin’ in his eyes till he shet ’em up, and he fell asleep. He had a real good nap, and when he woke up he went out to take a walk.
And he begun to think o’ what the posies and trees and creaturs had said about dyin’, and how they laughed at his bein’ scaret at it, and he says to himself, “Why, someways I don’t feel so scaret to-day, but I s’pose I be.” And jest then what do you think he done? Why, he met a Angel. He’d never seed one afore, but he knowed it right off. And the Angel says, “Ain’t you happy, little boy?” And Reuben says, “Well, I would be, only I’m so dreadful scaret o’ dyin’. It must be terr’ble cur’us,” he says, “to be dead.” And the Angel says, “Why, you be dead.” And he was.
The story of the boy that was scaret o’ dyin’ was the last story that little Lib ever told us. We saw her sometimes after that, but she was not strong enough to talk much. She sat no longer now in the low chair under the maples, but lay on a chintz-covered couch in the sitting-room, by the west windows. The once shrilly-sweet voice with its clear bird tones was but a whisper now, as she told us over and again, while she lay there, that she would tell us a new story “to-morrow.” It was always “to-morrow” till the end came. And the story was to be, so the whisper went on, “the beautif’lest story,—oh, you never did!” And its name was to be,—what a faint and feeble reproduction of the old triumphant announcement of a new title!—“The Posy Gardin’ that the King Kep’.”
She never told us that story. Before the autumn leaves had fallen, while the maples in front of the farmhouse were still red and glorious in their dying beauty, we laid our little friend to rest. Perhaps she will tell us the tale some day. I am sure there will be “a Angel” in it,—sure, too, that the story will have a new and tender meaning if we hear it there, that story of the King and of the posy gardin’ he kep’.
Transcriber’s Notes
- Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.
- Unusual spelling in chapter titles retained.