e of recognizing her or communicating with her, she was so much
overcome that she was fain to retire to another room and submit to be
gently ministered to by Dora.

Miss Franklin was only too thankful to be suffered to stay there in the
background. It did not strike her as odd that nobody in the house except
the other patients should go to sleep that night when her cousin was
hovering between life and death--nearer death than life. Neither had the
outspoken, kind-hearted gentlewoman any particular application of her
speech in her mind when she said sorrowfully--"Dear! dear! how grieved
he would be if he knew how worn out you were, Miss Dora. He thought
that his coming to the hospital would not only serve as a precedent, it
would be the simplest, safest, least troublesome plan where he himself
was concerned, though if he would have let me, I should have been only
too glad to have turned my back on 'Robinson's' for a time, and done
what I could for him. There is enough difference in our ages, and I have
known him all his life, in addition to our being connections if not near
relations, so that nobody need have found fault. Not that I pretend for
a moment that I could have done what your sister is doing--that is
something quite wonderful in every respect" (and here Miss Franklin did
draw up her bountiful figure, and fix the rather small eyes, sunk a
little in her full cheeks, pointedly on Dora). "I dare say he liked to
have her about him to the last, so long as he was sensible of her
presence. Men are extraordinary creatures--that I should say that now,
oh! my poor dear cousin Tom."

After she had recovered from her outburst of grief, and was sipping the
tea which Dora had made for her, she turned again to her companion. "You
look like a ghost yourself, Miss Dora. Will you not lie down in your
bedroom and trust me? I shall sit here and bring you word the moment I
hear that a change has come;" and at the ill-omened phrase poor Miss
Franklin's well-bred, distinct enunciation got all blurred and
faltering. In fact she shrank a good deal from the ordeal she was
magnanimously proposing for herself. As it happened she had never
undergone anything like it before, though she had reached middle age. It
was not easy for her to contemplate sitting there all alone through the
dreary small hours, knowing that Tom Robinson's spirit--the spirit of
the best friend she had ever known--was passing away without word or
sign in the adjoining