not be
afraid to die. A good conscience will smooth your pillow.'

And once, in her last illness, when Charlie asked if she were
comfortable, 'Not very, but I shall soon be quite comfortable, for I
shall hope to forget in heaven how little I have done, after all, here;
and yet I always wanted to help others.'

Oh, how good she was! And Charlie was good too, after the fashion of
young men: not altogether thoughtless, full of the promptings of his kind
heart; but Uncle Max was right when he said his last illness had ripened
him: it was not the old careless Charlie who had wooed Lesbia who lay
there: it was another and a better Charlie.

In the old days he had rallied me in a brotherly manner on my
old-fashioned, grave ways. 'You are not a modern young lady, Ursie,' he
would say; and he would often call me 'grandmother Ursula'; but all the
same he would listen to my plans with the utmost tolerance and good
nature.

Ah, those talks in the twilight, before the fatal disease developed
itself, and he lay in idle fashion on the couch with his arms under his
head, while I sat on the footstool or on the rug in the firelight! We
were to live together,--yes, that was always the dream; even when
Lesbia's fair face came between us, he would not hear of any difference.
I was to live with him and Lesbia, Lesbia was rich, and, though Charlie
had little, they were to marry soon.

I was to form a part of that luxurious household, but my time was to be
my own, and I was to devote it to the sick poor of Rutherford. 'Mind,
Ursula, you may work, but I will not have you overwork,' Charlie had once
said, more decidedly than usual; 'you must come home for hours of rest
and refreshment. You have a beautiful voice, and it shall be properly
trained; you may sing to your invalids as much as you like, and sometimes
I will come and sing too; but you must remember you have social duties,
and I shall expect you to entertain our friends.' And it was the idea of
this dual life of home sympathy and outside work that had so strongly
seized upon my imagination.

When Charlie died I was too sick at heart to carry out my plan. 'How can
one work alone?' I would say sorrowfully to myself; but after a time the
emptiness of my life and dissatisfaction with my surroundings brought
back the old thoughts.

I remembered the dear old rectory life, where every one was in earnest,
and contrasted it with the trifling pursuits that my aunt and cousin
called dutie