knitted on the new life together we anticipated to the old one we
remembered! How we had discussed Mabel's education, and the share
which should fall to each! Day-dreams; day-dreams! never to be
realised.

My mother went up to town, and in a week or two I received a telegram,
saying she was dangerously ill, and as fast as express train would
take me I was beside her. Dying, the doctor said; three days she might
live--no more. I told her the death-sentence, but she said resolutely,
"I do not feel that I am going to die just yet," and she was right.
There was an attack of fearful prostration--the valves of the heart
had failed--a very wrestling with Death, and then the grim shadow drew
backwards. I nursed her day and night with a very desperation of
tenderness, for now Fate had touched the thing dearest to me in life.
A second horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity
and my love beat back the death-stroke. She did not wish to die, the
love of life was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we
kept the foe at bay. Then dropsy supervened, and the end loomed slowly
sure.

It was then, after eighteen months' abstention, that I took the
Sacrament for the last time. My mother had an intense longing to
communicate before she died, but absolutely refused to do so unless I
took it with her. "If it be necessary to salvation," she persisted,
doggedly, "I will not take it if darling Annie is to be shut out. I
would rather be lost with her than saved without her." I went to a
clergyman I knew well, and laid the case before him; as I expected, he
refused to allow me to communicate. I tried a second, with the same
result. At last a thought struck me. There was Dean Stanley, my
mother's favourite, a man known to be of the broadest school within