She had slept about two hours when she was wakened by a strange noise in the sick chamber. A man and a woman quarrelling.
She bounded off the bed, and was in the room directly.
Lo and behold, there were the nurse and the dying man abusing one another like pick-pockets.
The cause of this little misunderstanding was not far to seek. The old crone had brought up her work, videlicet, a winding-sheet all but finished, and certain strips of glazed muslin about three inches deep. She soon completed the winding-sheet, and hung it over two chairs in the patient's sight; she then proceeded to double the slips in six, and nick them; then she unrolled them, and they were frills, and well adapted to make the coming corpse absurd, and divest it of any little dignity the King of Terrors might bestow on it.
She was so intent upon her congenial task, that she did not observe the sick man had awakened, and was viewing her and her work with an intelligent but sinister eye.
"What is that you are making?" said he, grimly.
The voice was rather clear, and strong, and seemed so loud and strange in that still chamber, that it startled the woman mightily. She uttered a little shriek, and then was wrath. "Plague take the man!" said she; "how you scared me. Keep quiet, do; and mind your own business," [The business of going off the hooks.]
"I ask you what is that you are making," said Griffith, louder; and raising himself on his arm.
"Baby's frills," replied the woman, coolly, recovering that contempt for the understandings of the dying, which marks the veritable crone.
"Ye lie," said Griffith. "And there is a shroud. Who is that for?"