Good mother, I will not ask you to close my eyes; that is a hard thing
to do, and I will take it off your hands. I will do that final service
of love for you. But you must grant me time, understand, to harden and
prepare myself for it, so that I won't make a botch of it. It would have
been much too soon!

MOTHER.

Thank God that we are still going to have a little time together!

ANTONY.

I hope so too! You have your old red cheeks again!

MOTHER.

A comical fellow, our new grave-digger! He was digging a grave this
morning when I passed through the church-yard. I asked him whom it was
for. "For whomsoever God wills," he said. "Perhaps for myself. The same
thing may happen to me that happened to my grandfather; he too had dug
one on chance once, and at night when he came home from the Inn he fell
into it and broke his neck."

LEONARD (_who, up to this time, has been reading the weekly paper_).

The fellow doesn't come from here--he can tell all the lies he likes.

MOTHER.