and its associations.

I fell in some time afterwards with a young doctor from the old county,
who, I found, had attended her, and I made some inquiries about her. He
told me that she died Christmas night. She came to his house on her old
mare, in the rain and snow the night before, to get him to go to see
someone, some "friend" of hers who was sick. He said she had more sick
friends than anyone he ever knew; he told her that he was sick himself
and could not go; but she was so importunate that he promised to go
next morning (she was always very worrying). He said she was wet and
shivering then (she never had any idea about really protecting herself),
and that she appeared to have a wretched cold. She had been riding all
day seeing about a Christmas-tree for the poor children. He urged her to
stop and spend the night, but she insisted that she must go on, though
it was nearly dark and raining hard, and the roads would have mired
a cat (she was always self-willed). Next day he went to see the sick
woman, and when he arrived he found her in one bed and Cousin Fanny in
another, in the same room. When he had examined the patient, he turned
and asked Cousin Fanny what was the matter with her. "Oh, just a
little cold, a little trouble in the chest, as Theodore Hook said," she
replied. "But I know how to doctor myself." Something about her voice
struck him. He went over to her and looked at her, and found her
suffering from acute pneumonia. He at once set to work on her. He took
the other patient up in his arms and carried her into another room,
where he told her that Cousin Fanny was a desperately ill woman. "She
was actually dying then, sir," he said to me, "and she died that night.
When she arrived at the place the night before, which was not until
after nine o'clock, she had gone to the stable herself to put up her old
mare, or rather to see that she was fed--she always did that--so when
she got into the house she was wet and chilled through, and she had to
go to bed. She must have had on wet clothes," he said.

I asked him if she knew she was going to die. He said he did not think
she did; that he did not tell her, and she talked about nothing except
her Christmas-tree and the people she wanted to see. He heard her
praying in the night, "and, by the way," he said, "she mentioned you.
She shortly became rather delirious, and wandered a good deal, talking
of things that must have happened when she was young; spoke of going