"All during my babe's and Richard's long illness my sister Martha had behaved like a true sister to me. She was my only sister, and, to the best of my knowledge, the only relation I had in the world--and a good one she was; from girl to woman her heart always rung out clear like a bell. She had three young children, but even fear of contagion reaching them could not keep her from me in my trouble. She kept making the journey backwards and forwards, at least once a week, in the carrier's cart; and, though she had no money to spare, she brought me, with her husband's blessing, presents of wine, and jellies, and delicate meat, to buy which, I knew right well, she and her husband and her children must have pinched themselves down to scanty rations of bread and water. Her hands helped mine to put the flowers in poor Richard's coffin; she bore me up while I followed it, pale and trembling, to the grave; and when that horrible day was coming to an end, and she was about to return home, she took me into her arms, and covering me with kisses and caressings, and a thousand gentle sayings, as if I had been a child of her own, instead of her sister and a grown woman, she made me promise to come down to her at Stratford at the end of the week, and stay with her till God should give me strength and spirits and guidance, to work for myself again. "But that promise was not kept. Next morning the rough-tender doctor came in, out of his mere goodness, to give me a friendly look, and a 'God speed you,' and found me, too, sickening for an illness. I knew, sir, he had made the discovery before his lips confessed a word; for when he had taken my wrist and felt my pulse, and looked up into my worn face, he turned pale, as if almost frightened, and such a look of grief came on his eyes and lips that he could not have said plainer, 'My poor woman! my poor woman! what I feared from the beginning, and prayed God not to permit, has come to pass at last.' "Then I fairly broke down and cried bitterly; and I told the doctor how sore afflicted I was--how God had taken my husband and babe from me--how all my little means had been consumed in the expenses of nursing--how the little furniture in my rooms would not pay half what I owed to honest folk--and how, even in my unspeakable wretchedness, I could not ask the Almighty to take away my life, for I could not rest in death if I left the world without paying my just debts. Well, sir, the doctor sate down by me, and said, in his softest and simplest way:--