" And she put it in her purse, shut it with a
snap, and took up the Bible again.
Mrs. Jones made a little sound between a gasp and a sob. Her head
rolled back on the pillow, and two tears dropped helplessly down the
furrows of her face. In that moment she felt the whole crushing misery
of being weak, and sick, and old,--so old that you have outlived your
claims to everything but the despotic care of charitable ladies, so
old that you are a mere hurdy-gurdy, expected each time any one in
search of edification chooses to turn your handle to quaver out tunes
of immortality. It is a bad thing to be very old. Of all the bad
things life forces upon us as we pass along it is the last and
worst--the bitterness at the bottom of the cup, the dregs of what for
many was after all always only medicine. Mrs. Jones had just enough of
the strength of fear left to keep quite still while the vicar's wife
read the Gospel in a voice that anger made harsh; but when she had
gone, after a parting admonition and a dreadful assurance that she
would come again soon, the tears rolled unchecked and piteous, and it
was a mercy that Priscilla also took it into her head to look in on
her way to church, for if she had not I don't know who would have
dried them for this poor baby of eighty-five.
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