"'Nurse,' replied my sister after a pause, 'she and I were the only children of our father, and we were left orphans very young. She was two years older than I, and she always thought for me and did for me as if she had been my mother. I could fill whole hours with telling you all the goodness and forbearance and love she displayed to me, from the time I was little or no bigger than my child here. I was often wayward and peevish, and gave her many hours of trouble, but though at times she could be hot to others she never spoke an unkind word to me. There was no sacrifice that she would not have made for me; but all the return I ever made was to worry her with my evil jealous temper. I was continually imagining unchristian things against her: that she slighted me; that, because she had a mistress who made much of her, she didn't care for me; that she didn't think my children fit to be proud of. And I couldn't keep all these foolish thoughts in my head to myself, but I must needs go and speak them out to her, and irritate her to quarrel with me. But she always returned smooth words to my angry ones, and I had never a fit of my unjust temper but she charmed me out of it, and showed me my error in such a way that I was reproved, without too much humiliation, and loved her more than ever. Oh! dear friend, dear good nurse, if you have a sister, don't treat her, as I did Abigail, with suspicion and wicked passion; for should you, all the light speeches of your frowardness will return to you, and lie heavy on your heart when hers shall beat no more.' "When Martha had said this she cried very bitterly; and as I lay dead on my bed, and listened to her unfair self-reproaches, I longed to break the icy bonds that held me, and yearned to clasp her to my breast. Still, though I could neither move nor utter a sound, it thrilled me with gladness to see how she loved me. "'Mother,' said little Rhoda, softly, 'don't cry. We shan't be long away from Aunt and her baby, for when this life is done we shall go to them. You know, mother, you told me so last night.' "It was not permitted to me to hear any more. A colder chill came over my brain--and, wrapt in unconsciousness and deep stillness, I lay upon my bed. "My next recollection is of beholding the gray dawn stream in through the half-opened windows, and of wondering, amid vague reminiscences of my previous sensations, how it was that a dead person could take notice of the world it moved in when alive. It is not enough to say that my experience of the last repose was pleasant to me; I was rejoiced and greatly delighted by it. Death, it seemed then, was no state of cold decay for men to shudder at with affright--but a condition of tranquility and mental comfort. I continued to muse on this remarkable discovery for an hour and more, when my favourite nurse reappeared to relieve the woman who had taken the night-watch, and approached me.