"Well, _her_ funeral is over, I hope, and _her_ hymn sung; and our ears
shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous.
Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it
hard-hard-harder."

We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even
terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her
teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips,
while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over
with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies
seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly
tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her,
and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling
people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is
passing away."

And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the somber impression
which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and
chatty; and so we got home.

This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of
that delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of. It was the first
time, also, I had seen her exhibit anything like temper.

Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once afterwards did
I witness on her part a momentary sign of anger. I will tell you how
it happened.