This seventieth birthday of Aunt Jael's was a red-letter day. My emotions as I lay awake watching with memory's eye that curious dinner party, with its wealth of new food, new faces, new situations, new sensations and new talk, were of the same order as those of a playgoer who lives over in his mind the pleasures of a new and brilliant drama he has witnessed. New persons and new conversations were my favourite acquisitions; these were in the strict sense dramatic, and they approached most nearly the other habit of my inner life—my visualizings and imaginings—of which indeed they furnished the raw material. I would only memorize conversations from the point at which they began to interest me; hence, even when I remember them best, they begin suddenly, and causelessly.
So it was with the conversation on that memorable evening. I fancy Aunt Jael and Uncle Simeon had already been talking for some time—probably on the things of the Lord, which were not new and not dramatic—but I recall nothing until Uncle Simeon was well set in a review of his life; his holy, if humble life.
"M'yes, ah yes, the Lord found it good to try one's faith; from the very day on which one saw the error of one's ways, and the scales fell from one's eyes, and one closed with God's gracious offer, from that very day the Lord found it good to extend His hand in chastisement and to visit one with trials and afflictions. One bowed one's head: but it was a sore trial for one's faith, one's earnest, if humble, faith. First one's sister passed away, one's dear sister Rosa. Then came one's business troubles, one's ill health, one's grave illness. Last of all one's dear old father went before—"
"Your brother too," interrupted my Great-Aunt. "You don't mention him; and he was the best of the Greebers, from all accounts."
"Ah, surely not, surely not?" ignoring the main point of the interruption, "what of Immanuel Greeber, who gave you these glorious trophies of the field of missionary labour, one's well-loved cousin Immanuel?"
"There was some mystery about his death," pursued she, ignoring red-herring missionaries. "They never really knew how he died. Immanuel told me. He went to lie down in his bed one afternoon, saying he felt sick, and within the hour he was dead."
"Ah, yes," sighed Uncle Simeon, passing his hand over his brow in anguish, "one had not spoken of him; one could not; one's love was too tender. Heart-failure, one thought oneself. M'yes." His head m'yessed sadly to and fro.
"More like something he'd been eating," suggested my Grandmother.
"Too sudden for that," objected Aunt Jael. "No bad food could kill you so sudden. 'Twas something a deal quicker than bad food; more mysterious, folk said."
"Poison," said I.