“Not I,” cried her brother, as he walked around the table distributing the letters. “Ah,” he said, “my friend North. He was to have joined us with his wife next week, Anne; but Clayborne is dead. You will all be sorry to hear that. North says—it is, as usual, interesting. Shall I read it?”
“Oh, certainly, Archie,—all of it. I am very sorry. It will be a great loss to Dr. North.”
“And to our too small world of letters,” added Lyndsay.
“He says, ‘We—that is, Vincent and I—had spent two hours with our old friend in that great book-clad room we all know. We came away talking of his vast knowledge of medieval men and things. I had chanced to say I wondered how a gentleman in the fifteenth century spent a day, and he had at once told it all in curious detail—as to hours, dress, diet, and occupations. I left Vincent and went back for a book I had meant to borrow. When I entered, Clayborne was seated as usual with a little book in his hand. As he did not stir, I went up to him. The book was kept open by his palm. I stooped over him and saw that the book was Fulke Greville’s on Democracy. He was dead. He had noiselessly gone out, without stir of a finger. He must have been receiving ideas, dealing with them, and then—’ See, Margaret, this is his symbol of death. ‘I suppose, dear Lyndsay, you will think it strange that I sat still a half-hour beside my dead friend. I never felt the other world so close; it seemed within touch. At last—as the great frame began to stiffen—the book fell. I took it, marked the place, and put it in my pocket.’
“The rest,” said Lyndsay, “is of less interest.”
“A happy exit,” said Anne.
“I cannot think that,” returned Margaret. “I should want to know that I was dying.”
“One rarely does,” said her husband. “You get muddled, and say and do foolish and ill-bred things. I sympathize with a friend of mine who gave orders that he was to be left to die alone.”
“How horrible! How unnatural!”
“No, no,” cried Anne; “it is you who are ‘un-natured.’ But imagine dying with such a dull book in hand! I was wondering what book I should want to have last seen on earth.”