about his symptoms. He instructed that Jaffray be kept very quiet on a
low diet and stimulants, to be given every few hours. This treatment
benefited Jaffray so that he was able to sit up in a favorite arm chair
now and then and listen to Charles Dickens' story, "Our Mutual Friend,"
then running as a serial in Harper's Magazine, read to him by his
little gray-eyed daughter now ten years old.

At the close of the reading one morning he said: "What a great
man! I'd rather die to-day and leave behind me the fame of Charles
Dickens than live to be a hundred years old."

Much encouraged by Jaffray's condition, Renestine took fresh
hope and went about her daily occupation with more energy. She knew
Jaffray's tender affection for his children and when on his good days
he had been made comfortable in his big arm chair the two young
daughters, Lola and Ena, and their little brothers, Lester, Andrew and
Frank, were allowed to come into his room and be near him, the infant
son Frank resting in his arms, Lola standing by like a little mother
watching over them all.

Other days he would look out of the window and watch the big
oak tree standing near, with its leaves turning brown, shaking in the
wind. Winter was turning the vines on the summer house into lifeless
twists of runners and bending the rose hushes until the petals were
strewn about the ground.

It was not until the first week in November that Renestine
noticed that Jaffray was not as strong as usual. He kept to his bed
now altogether, and his great heart seemed to speak to her of what was
uppermost there--the parting; after only thirteen years of wedded life