“All right now, Maria, eh?”
Maria smiled, and a new thought seemed to strike her. “Doctor,” she said feebly, but confidently too, “will ’ee ax ’em to put it in my coffin?”
As dawn drew nigh the night nurse paused near Maria’s bed, then, coming closer, bent over it, then, turning up the light, bent lower still. Straightening herself after a moment’s pause, she drew up the sheet softly over the old woman’s face.
But the thin arms beneath were folded close and the face wore a smile of bliss and peace, such as it might have worn more than half a century before, when, as a young mother, she had clasped her first-born to her breast.
* * * * *
“So she’s gone,” said the doctor. “Well, what did you do about the plate?”
The nurse laughed, and twisted her apron.
“It seems a silly thing,” she said, “but there! it was the last thing she asked me, and I someway felt I had to do it. I put it in her coffin.”
BECKY AND BITHEY.
No pleasanter place than Mrs. Meatyard’s dairy was to be found at any hour of the summer’s day; but it was a busy place too. At early dawn the clatter of bright cans and the lowing of cows in the adjacent yard announced milking time, and men came staggering in with great foaming pails of milk and poured it, sweet and warm, into the shallow tins prepared for it. A little later mistress and maid alike were busy skimming the thick folds of last night’s cream. On churning days the regular splash, splash in the outer milk-house was the forerunner of the pleasant labour of butter-making. On cheese days the huge vat had to be filled with gallons and gallons of milk, and then the rennet carefully measured out, and then Mrs. Meatyard and Rebecca took it in turns to “work” the curds; and what with this working, and putting the curds into presses, and running off the whey, and cleaning up afterwards, a body, as Rebecca frequently said, would be better off with four pair of hands nor with one.