I do not know if her fears were
realized,--if her cottage is forsaken,--if she dwells among paupers, or
sleeps in the village church-yard; but I cannot think of her as lonely
or poor or dead. Her saintly face told of blessed communion; I know that
she was rich in faith and hope; and were I assured that her spirit had
left the flesh, I should only picture her to myself standing erect at
heaven's doorway, welcoming strangers with the same serenity with which
she said to me at parting,--"I shall meet you _there_."
She offered me a farewell gift of flowers from her garden. It was a
beautiful cottage-garden, and many of the flowers were brilliant and
even rare, giving proof of careful, if not scientific culture. Still I
hesitated. My hands were full of sweet may, red campion, and other
native field-blossoms, which had introduced themselves to me
anonymously. They were the children of the green sod which I had been
treading so lightly on my way to the village; and, in the quiet of my
ramble, they had seemed to me like whispers from Him who made them, and
with whom I had never felt so utterly alone. I could not bear to see
them displaced by Ann's garden-belles, tempting as the latter would have
been at any other moment. She saw my indifference to her offer.
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