“Thank you kindly,” Tim answered, in the shadow of a voice. “Father O’Connor’s promised to bless my grave. It’s not the same as being at Tiverton where the ground would be soaked with the blessing all round, but leastways St. Peter ’ll not be after flinging it in my face that the blood of the child’s on me.”
The Overseer regarded him with such tenderness as did not often shine within the doors of the poor-farm.
“Tim,” he said, leaning forward as if he were half ashamed of his good impulse, “don’t worry any more. I’ll pay for your grave at Tiverton, and see that you are put in it.”
The old pauper turned upon him a glance of positive rapture. He clasped his thin, withered hands, trembling like rushes in the winds of autumn.
“Holy and Blessed Virgin,” he prayed, almost with a sob, “be good to him for giving a poor old dying creature the wish of his heart! Blessed St. Peter—”
But the rush of joy was too great. With a face of ecstasy the old man died.
MISS GAYLORD AND JENNY
When Alice Gaylord was, by the death of her grandmother, set free from the long servitude of attending upon the invalid, it might have seemed that nothing need hinder the fulfilling of her protracted engagement to Dr. Carroll. The friends of both the young people expressed, in decorous fashion, their satisfaction that old Mrs. Gaylord, ninety and bed-ridden, should at last have been released, and it was entirely well understood that what they meant was to signify their pleasure at the ending of Alice’s tedious waiting. Some doubt in regard to the girl’s health, however, still clouded the prospect. Long care and confinement had told on her; and when a decent interval had passed after the death, and the wedding did not take place, people began to say that it was such a pity that Alice was not well enough to be married.