"Well, Lillie," he said. "Hasn't it been a full life, and isn't this a good end?" My mother still wept.
I was crying too. He turned to me at the other side of the bed and said:
"Don't cry, Nora, there is nothing to cry about."
I said, "I won't cry." He patted my hand and said, "That's my brave girl." He then whispered to me, "Put your hand here," making a movement under the clothes. I put my hand where he indicated. "Put it under the clothes," he said. I did so and he slipped something stiff into my hand.
"Smuggle that out," he said. "It is my last statement."
Mother was sitting at the other side of the bed holding Papa's hand, her face growing grayer and older every minute.
"Remember, Lillie," said my father. "I want you and the girls to go to America. It will be the best place for the girls to get on. Leave the boy at home in Ireland. He was a little brick and I am proud of him."
My mother could only nod her head. Papa tried to cheer her up by telling her about a man who came to the Post Office, during the revolution, to buy a penny stamp; and how indignant he was when he was told he could not get one. "Don't know what Dublin is coming to when you can't buy a stamp at the Post Office," he said.