My mother began to sink the day after I was born. My father sent to
Carlisle for doctors, and would have coined his heart's blood into gold
to save her, if that could have been; but it could not. My aunt Fanny
used to say sometimes, that she thought that Helen did not wish to live,
and so just let herself die away without trying to take hold on life; but
when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all the doctors bade
her do, with the same sort of uncomplaining patience with which she had
acted through life. One of her last requests was to have Gregory laid in
her bed by my side, and then she made him take hold of my little hand.
Her husband came in while she was looking at us so, and when he bent
tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now, and seemed to gaze on us
two little half-brothers, with a grave sort of kindness, she looked up in
his face and smiled, almost her first smile at him; and such a sweet
smile! as more besides aunt Fanny have said. In an hour she was dead.
Aunt Fanny came to live with us.
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