"Yes, Jael."
"Well, sister, I haven't many hours to go. The Lord is calling, but I've this to say to 'ee first. These eighty years we've been together I've been a hard sister to 'ee. These eighty years I've been a sinner. 'Ee 've been a loving forgiving woman, and I've been a bad and selfish one: full o' pride and wickedness. Before I go, I want to hear 'ee with your own lips say as 'ee forgive me, as maybe the Lord in His mercy will too—"
A fit of coughing cut her short. Her pride she had torn into shreds. Grandmother was sobbing with joy.
"Don't 'ee talk so, my dear! I've nothing to forgive 'ee."
"Hannah woman, 'tis not so. Come, oh say 'ee forgive me." The old woman was eager, desperate: pleading against time, against Eternity.
"I forgive 'ee," said my Grandmother.
The same evening Aunt Jael died in her sleep. The face was not ugly in death; the mouth was still hard and proud, but the eyes were serene.
She won the glory-race by just seven days. After this brief space of time—the same span as between my birth and my mother's death—my Grandmother followed.
It was the day after Aunt Jael's funeral. Towards the end she called me Rachel. At the very last she sat up in bed, gazed at me with a tenderness already radiant with the glory of the City of Heaven.