Then the whole of my father's household—all except my father himself—came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who sat with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, who knelt in a group by the door.
Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she had opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to be choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, and sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest were inspiring him.
After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction—anointing the sweet eyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong, and the feet which had walked in the ways of God.
All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of a church—no sound within except my father's measured tread in the room below, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makes when it is far away and going out.
When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for me and being told I was in the cot, she said:
"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now."
A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and then she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay with my face hidden in her neck.
What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost too sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, while other events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things that are forgotten and lost.
"Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told me she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I would not like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns.
I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hard the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it.