eel so scaret to-day, but I s'pose I
be." And jest then what do you think he done? Why, he met a Angel. He'd
never seed one afore, but he knowed it right off. And the Angel says,
"Ain't you happy, little boy?" And Reuben says, "Well, I would be, only
I'm so dreadful scaret o' dyin'. It must be terr'ble cur'us," he says,
"to be dead." And the Angel says, "Why, you be dead." And he was.

* * * * *

The story of the boy that was scaret o' dyin' was the last story that
little Lib ever told us. We saw her sometimes after that, but she was
not strong enough to talk much. She sat no longer now in the low chair
under the maples, but lay on a chintz-covered couch in the sitting-room,
by the west windows. The once shrilly-sweet voice with its clear bird
tones was but a whisper now, as she told us over and again, while she
lay there, that she would tell us a new story "to-morrow." It was always
"to-morrow" till the end came. And the story was to be, so the whisper
went on, "the beautif'lest story,--oh, you never did!" And its name was
to be,--what a faint and feeble reproduction of the old triumphant
announcement of a new title!--"The Posy Gardin' that the King Kep'."

She never told us that story. Before the autumn leaves had fallen, while
the maples in front of the farmhouse were still red and glorious in
their dying beauty, we laid our little friend to rest. Perhaps she will
tell us the tale some day. I am sure there will be "a Angel" in
it,--sure, too, that the story will have a new and tender meaning if we
hear it there, that story of the King and of the posy gardin' he kep'.

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Transcriber's Notes

1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.
2. Unusual spelling in chapter titles retained.

End of Project Gutenberg's Story-Tell Lib, by Annie Trumbull Slosson

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