“Oh, sister—sister!” cried Mrs. Esther.
“’There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,’” said Mrs. Deborah. “Kitty, child,” she turned her pale face to me, “be kind to my sister.”
We wept together. Outside there was the usual tumult of the market—men buying and selling, with shouts and cries; within, three women weeping, and one dying.
“Go, dear,” said she who was dying; “call the Doctor. He hath been very generous to us. Tell him I would receive the last offices from his hands.”
The Doctor came. He read the appointed service in that deep voice of his, which was surely given him for the conversion of the wicked. The tears streamed down his face as he bent over the bed, saying in the words of the Epistle appointed—“’My daughter, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; and scourgeth every child whom He receiveth.’”
In the evening the poor lady died, being released from her long imprisonment by that Royal Mandate, the Will of God.
We buried her in the green and pleasant churchyard of Islington. It is a sweet spot, far removed from the noise of London; and though her poor remains feel nothing, nor can hear any more the tumult of crowds, it is good to think that round her are no streets, only the few houses of the village. She lies surrounded by fields and trees; the daisies grow over her grave, the lark sings above the church; she is at rest and in peace.
CHAPTER XV.
HOW MRS. ESTHER WAS DISCHARGED.
After poor Mrs. Deborah’s death my lessons came to a sudden stop, and have never been resumed. Some of that perspicacity of style which I have often admired in our modern divines might have fallen to my lot, to enrich this narrative, had I continued in my course of single and double book-keeping.