At last Mrs. Woodcock's door was closed against all visitors except the physician. Edward was there; and he was dying. Great decorum and tenderness were observed about the secrets of that dreary house; but it was known to those who most cared to know that there was no solace to the mother's heart--no softening of the son's. He treated her like a servant; and in the way that good-natured people never treat servants. He repelled her affection; he mocked.... But I can not dwell on this. One summer morning the hearse and two mourning coaches were seen moving from the door under the shady trees in the close. Old friends hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that all was over. They would have been glad if there had been any domestic resource for the mother; any other survivor to make the old home somewhat like itself. But was ever any worn-out being more lonely? One old acquaintance, by no means an intimate friend, saw that it would now be right to go. She dreaded the visit inexpressibly; but she saw that it was right to go. She went; and she shed a lapful of tears when she came home. She found Mrs. Woodcock immeasurably more haughty than ever before. She could scarcely rise at first from the rheumatism she had caught by night-watching; and when she sat down on her faded old sofa she worked her thumbs and twitched her fingers as if impatient of her visitor, and cut short or contradicted every thing that was said. She still harped on Oxford; on which, however, it was impossible to say any thing to please her. At last--whether it was that the effort was of itself too much for her, or that old tones of voice and a kindly expression of countenance touched the spring of tears, I do not know--but she was overtaken by such a passion of weeping as it was heart-rending to witness. She well-nigh choked before she would acknowledge her own tears; but when she laid her head against the back of the sofa, her sobs shook the very room. She did not stop speaking for this. She said but one thing, but she said it incessantly. "Don't pity me, Mrs. A----. I can not bear to be pitied. I am not at all unhappy. I can not bear to be pitied. You must not pity me," and so on. Such a life could not last long. I forget exactly how long it was. Probably, in the suspense of our compassion, it seemed longer than it would now in the retrospect. It could not, I think, have been many months before the hearse was again moving away from the door under the trees, and we felt that the household which had been once so much to the city was extinguished. Nothing was left but that which still remains--the portrait of the mayor in his robes in the great hall, and the aching remembrance in many hearts of the fate of his wife and only child. III. THE MAID-SERVANT. "Where is Jemima? I want Jemima," said a feeble voice, interrupted by coughing, from a bed in a sick room.