“Do you remember the yellow roses in the porch,” she murmured, speaking, as must be supposed, to the Squire, but her eyes were closed: “how the dew on them used to glisten again in the sun on a summer’s morning? I was picking such a handful of them last night—beautiful roses, they were; sweet and beautiful as the flowers we shall pick in heaven.”
The doctor came upstairs, his shoes creaking. It was Pitt. Pitt! The girl had met him by chance, and told him what was amiss.
“Ah,” said he, bending over the chair, “you have called me too late. I should have been here a month or two ago.”
“She is dying of starvation,” whispered the Squire. “All that money—ten pounds—which I handed over to that blessed fraternity, and they never gave her a sixpence of it—after assuring me they’d see to her!”
“Ah,” said Pitt, his mouth taking a comical twist. “They meant they’d see after her antecedents, I take it, not her needs. Quite a blessed fraternity, I’m sure, as you say, Squire.”
He turned away to Mrs. Mapping. But nothing could be done for her; even the Squire, with all his impetuosity, saw that. Never another word did she speak, never another recognizing gaze did she give. She just passed quietly away with a sigh as we stood looking at her; passed to that blissful realm we are all travelling to, and which had been the last word upon her lips—Heaven.
And that is the true story of Dorothy Grape.