'Now, what I want you to do,' he says, 'is to lay that beside me when it's all over. I have always had my doubts about the dead sleeping so quiet as some folks say. But I think I shall sleep if you lay that beside me, for I am very tired, Nelly,' he said, 'very tired.'
Then I went back to his bed, where he lay looking quite calm and comfortable.
'The end has come very suddenly,' says he; 'but it is best this way.'
Then we was both quiet a bit.
'I may be wrong,' he went on presently, his face quite straight, but a laugh in his blue eye. 'I may be wrong, Nelly, but I think you would like to kiss me before I die—I know well enough you'll do it after.'
And when he said that, I was glad I had never kissed another man. And soon after that, it being the coldest hour of all the night, he moved his head on his pillow and said—
'I'm off now, Nelly, but you needn't wake the doctors. It's very dark outside. Hand me out, my girl, hand me out.' So I gave him my hand, and he died holding it. Whether I grieved much or little over my old master is no one's business but my own. I went about the house, and I did my duty—ever since Master Jasper had been grown up I had been housekeeper. I did my duty, I say, and before the coffin lid was screwed down I laid that green leather case under the shroud by my master's side; and just as I had done it I turned round feeling that some one was in the room, and there stood young Master Jasper at the door looking at me.
'All's ready now,' I said to the undertaker's men, and called them in, and young Master Jasper, he followed me along the passage. 'What were you doing?'
'I was putting something in the master's coffin he told me to put there.'
'What was it?' he asked, very sharp and sudden.