with ready tact, explained her letter away by saying that the real reason of it was only a selfish impatience to see her dear "Flochen" in London. Miss Nightingale's mother was now very old; her mind was barely coherent; and it would perhaps have been much the same to her if Florence had not been by her side. Yet the actual presence was a great comfort; and Miss Nightingale, whose calls in earlier life had estranged her somewhat from her mother, was the more anxious to be with her now. There were gleams of brightness in the mother's manner which touched the daughter deeply. "Her mind," she afterwards wrote, "was like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--darkened, blotted, effaced, and with great gaps; but if you looked and looked and accustomed your eye to the dimness and the broken lights, there were the noble forms transparent through the darkness."[190] Mother and daughter had much converse on spiritual things. At other times, pride and pleasure in her famous daughter were mixed in the mother's mind with the regrets of earlier years. "Where is Florence?" she once asked, in the daughter's absence; "is she still in her hospital? I suppose she will never marry now." She loved to have Longfellow's poem read to her; "it is all true," she would say, "all real." When Florence came, the mother loved her presence dearly. "Who are you? Oh, yes, I see you are Florence. Stay with me. Do not leave me. It makes me so happy to see you sitting by me. You come down to teach us to love; but you have so much that is important to do, you must not stay with me." "Oh, are you my dearest Florence? I ought to kiss your hand, I am sure." The daughter's wit cheered her mother. "You have a right to laugh," she said; "so few of us have. You are so good--so much better than the rest of us. You do me so much good." [190] Letter to "Aunt Mai," Feb. 5, 1880.