AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing but exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more than ever like my mother—that "sweet saint whom the Lord has made his own." I know what he means—like her as she was at the last.
My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a child—a woman can see through and through him.
Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like baby when she is tired after walking round the chairs and comes to be nursed. What children we all are at the end—just children!
AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement to-day. It seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort of censure from Rome through his Bishop—about his toleration of me, I suppose—but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure, having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges and forbidden to return to his diocese.
And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor of Ellan, to be distributed by Father Dan!
I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the dear Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a general thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary's and then Rosary and Benediction.
It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last day in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure.
How God governs everything!