Good mother, I will not ask you to close my eyes; that is a hard thing to do, and I will take it off your hands. I will do that final service of love for you. But you must grant me time, understand, to harden and prepare myself for it, so that I won't make a botch of it. It would have been much too soon!
MOTHER.
Thank God that we are still going to have a little time together!
ANTONY.
I hope so too! You have your old red cheeks again!
MOTHER.
A comical fellow, our new grave-digger! He was digging a grave this morning when I passed through the church-yard. I asked him whom it was for. "For whomsoever God wills," he said. "Perhaps for myself. The same thing may happen to me that happened to my grandfather; he too had dug one on chance once, and at night when he came home from the Inn he fell into it and broke his neck."
LEONARD (who, up to this time, has been reading the weekly paper).
The fellow doesn't come from here—he can tell all the lies he likes.