“Tis a great thing for anybody to have got through, aint it?” said Mrs. Crowe softly, as she began to go down the stairs on tiptoe. The warm air from the kitchen beneath met them with a sense of welcome and shelter.
“I dont know why it is, but I feel as near again to Tempy down here as I do up there,” replied Sister Binson. “I feel as if the air was full of her, kind of. I can sense things, now and then, that she seems to say. Now I never was one to take up with no nonsense of sperits and such, but I declare I felt as if she told me just now to put some more wood into the stove.”
Mrs. Crowe preserved a gloomy silence. She had suspected before this that her companion was of a weaker and more credulous disposition than herself. “ Tis a great thing to have got through,” she repeated, ignoring definitely all that had last been said. “I suppose you know as well as I that Tempy was one that always feared death. Well, it` all put behind her now; she knows what tis.” Mrs. Crowe gave a little sigh, and Sister Binson` quick sympathies were stirred toward this other old friend, who also dreaded the great change.
Tempy spoke
“Id never like to forgit almost those last words Tempy spoke plain to me,” she said gently, like the comforter she truly was. “She looked up at me once or twice, that last afternoon after I come to set by her, and let Mi` Owen go home; and I says, Can I do anything to ease you, Tempy? and the tears come into my eyes so I couldnt see what kind of a nod she give me. No, Sarah Ann, you cant, dear, says she; and then she got her breath again, and says she, looking at me real meanin, Im only a-gettin sleepier and sleepier; that` all there is, says she, and smiled up at me kind of wishful, and shut her eyes. I knew well enough all she meant. Shed been lookin out for a chance to tell me, and I don know` she ever said much afterwards.”
Mrs. Crowe was not knitting; she had been listening too eagerly. “Yes, twill be a comfort to think of that sometimes,” she said, in acknowledgment.
“I know that old Dr. Prince said once, in eveni meetin, that hed watched by many a dyin bed, as we well knew, and enough of his sick folks had been scared o dyin their whole lives through; but when they come to the last, hed never seen one but was willin, and most were glad, to go. “Tis as natural as bein born or livin on, he said. I dont know what had moved him to speak that night. You know he want in the habit of it, and twas the monthly concert of prayer for foreign missions anyways,” said Sarah Ann; “but twas a great stay to the mind to listen to his words of experience.”
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