except her Christmas-tree and the people she wanted to see. He heard her
praying in the night, "and, by the way," he said, "she mentioned you.
She shortly became rather delirious, and wandered a good deal,
talking of things that must have happened when she was young;
spoke of going to see her mother somewhere. The last thing she ever said
was something about fashion, which," he said, "showed how ingrained
is vanity in the female mind." The doctor knows something of human nature.
He concluded what he had to say with, "She was in some respects
a very remarkable woman -- if she had not been an old maid.
I do not suppose that she ever drew a well breath in her life.
Not that I think old maids cannot be very acceptable women," he apologized.
"They are sometimes very useful." The doctor was a rather enlightened man.

Some of her relatives got there in time for the funeral, and a good many
of the poor people came; and she was carried in a little old spring wagon,
drawn by Fashion, through the snow, to the old home place,
where Scroggs very kindly let them dig the grave, and was buried there
in the old graveyard in the garden, in a vacant space just beside her mother,
with the children around her. I really miss her a great deal.
The other boys say they do the same. I suppose it is the trouble
she used to give us.

The old set are all doing well. Doug is a professor.
He says the word "spinster" gave him a twist to philology.
Old Blinky is in Paris. He had a picture in the salon last year,
an autumn landscape, called "Le Cote du Bois". I believe
the translation of that is "The Woodside". His coloring is said to be
nature itself. To think of old Blinky being a great artist!
Little Kitty is now a big girl, and is doing finely at school.
I have told her she must not be an old maid. Joe is a preacher