"Who is it?" she asked.
And then Violet knelt down with her sweet face close to the old woman's, and said very softly, "Mother, I am Laddie's sweetheart."
"Laddie's sweetheart;" she echoed; "he's over-young to be wed—but there! I forgot. He's been a good son, my dear, always good to his old mother, and he'll be a good husband. And you'll make him a good wife, my dear, won't you? God bless you."
And then her trembling hand was feeling for something, and Laddie guessed her wish, and put his own hand and Violet's into it; two young hands, full of life and health and pulsation, under the old, worn, hard worked hand, growing cold and weak with death.
"God bless you, dears, Laddie and his sweetheart. But I'm a bit tired just now."
And then she dozed again, and the two sat by in the dim, quiet room, drawn closer together and dearer to each other than they ever had been before, in the presence of the Great Angel of Death who was so near the old mother now. And very tenderly he did his work that night! Only a sigh and then a sudden hush, during which the listeners' pulses throbbed in their ears, as they listened for the next long-drawn, painful, difficult breath that did not come; and then the weary limbs relaxed into the utter repose and stillness of rest after labor, for the night had come when no man can work,—the holy starlit night of death, with the silver streaks of the great dawn of the Resurrection shining in the east.
For a moment they sat spell-bound; and then it was Laddie, he had so often seen death face to face, who gave way, throwing himself on the bed with an exceeding bitter cry, "O mother, mother, say you forgive me!"
What need for words? Did he not know that she forgave him? If indeed she knew she had anything to forgive. But she was "a bit tired."
Don't you know when bedtime comes, and the nurse calls the children, how sometimes they leave their toys, which a few minutes before seemed all in all to them, without a look, and the cake unfinished, and are carried off with their heads bent down, and their eyes heavy with sleep, too tired even to say good night, or speak a pretty, lisping word of the play-time past, or the pleasures coming in the morning? And so it is often with us bigger children; when the nurse Death calls us at our bedtime, we are "a bit tired," and glad to go, too sleepy even for thought or farewell.
They laid her by the old master in Sunnybrook churchyard; and the village folks talked long afterwards of the funeral, and how Dr. Carter, "he as used to be called Laddie," followed her to the grave, "along with the pretty young lady as he was going to marry; and, bless my heart! wouldn't the poor old soul have felt proud if she could have seen 'em? But she's better where she is, where there ain't no buryin' and no pride neither."