"What shall I read, dear?"

"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a
long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we
could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"

So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the
fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on
living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while
longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your
very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying.
You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going
to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you
laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly
the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you
forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before
they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every
moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to
remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them
everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice,
that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die."

Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some
days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at
last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her
and from each other.

"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself
from that time, but she did not cry or break down.