en water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like
an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to
that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny
was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve,
which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It
helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor
has not told him that I am going to die."

"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said
aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy.

"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love
made blind instead of prophet-sighted.

"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright
air," said Theophil.

"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily.

Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to
me, Theophil?"

"What shall I read, dear?"

"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a
long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we
could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"

So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the
fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on
living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while
longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your
very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying.
You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going
to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you
laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly
the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you
forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before
they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every
moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to
remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them
everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice,
that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die."

Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some
days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at
last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her
and from each other.

"My po