'"I don't think _I_ should," said Lucy; "I'm almost sure I shouldn't."

'We lay still for about another hour, and then the door opened, and our
mother came in. She was crying very much, and had a handkerchief to her
eyes.

"'Your father wants to see you," she said; "come at once."

'We crept very quietly into the room of death, and stood beside our
father's bed. His face was so altered that it frightened us, and we
trembled from head to foot. But he held out his hand to us, Rosalie, and we
drew closer to him. Then he whispered--

'"Good-bye! don't forget your father; and don't wait till you come to die
to get ready for another world."

'Then we kissed him, and our mother told us to go back to bed. I never
forgot my father's last words to us; and I often wondered what made him say
them.

'The next morning we heard that our father was dead. Gerald arrived too
late to see him; he was at college then, and was just preparing for his
last examination.

'My mother seemed at first very much distressed by my father's death; she
shut herself up in her room, and would see no one. The funeral was a very
grand one; all the people of the neighbourhood came to it, and Lucy and I
peeped out of one of the top windows to see it start. After it was over,
Gerald went back to college, and my mother returned to her novels. I think
she thought, Rosalie, that she would be able to return to her old life much