Miss Brown was dying. We hardly knew her voice, it was so devoid
of the complaining tone we had always associated with it. Miss
Jessie told me afterwards that it, and her face too, were just what
they had been formerly, when her mother's death left her the young
anxious head of the family, of whom only Miss Jessie survived.
She was conscious of her sister's presence, though not, I think, of
ours. We stood a little behind the curtain: Miss Jessie knelt
with her face near her sister's, in order to catch the last soft
awful whispers.
"Oh, Jessie! Jessie! How selfish I have been! God forgive me for
letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did! I have so loved
you--and yet I have thought only of myself. God forgive me!"
"Hush, love! hush!" said Miss Jessie, sobbing.
"And my father, my dear, dear father! I will not complain now, if
God will give me strength to be patient. But, oh, Jessie! tell my
father how I longed and yearned to see him at last, and to ask his
forgiveness. He can never know now how I loved him--oh! if I might
but tell him, before I die! What a life of sorrow his has been,
and I have done so little to cheer him!"
A light came into Miss Jessie's face. "Would it comfort you,
dearest, to think that he does know?--would it comfort you, love,
to know that his cares, his sorrows"--Her voice quivered, but she
steadied it into calmness--"Mary! he has gone before you to the
place where the weary are at rest.
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