"If this really is the end. There might be something else, you know. Give me my vinaigrette." The old lady sniffed it as if she would ward off the odors of eternity, just as twenty years ago she had used it against the odors of a much shorter journey to Lyons. She had been only too anxious to sleep then. But now.... How bright her eyes were, like precious stones, like pools of water holding out against the encroaching frost of death. "I do not really want to die," she said. "It seems such a little while since I began to feel younger again. Of late lying here I have remembered so much that I had forgotten. Odd little incidents of childhood have come back to me so sharply, so very vividly and clearly. Earlier this afternoon, before you came, I saw my father in that corner in his Hessian boots and cocked hat; and he said to me, 'Where's your Mamma?' It was so vivid that I made a movement to get out of bed and run to look for her. And then he asked me to fill his snuff-box with maccaboy. I have often wondered why a man so particular about his personal appearance should be a slave to snuff. But he was. Do you know what maccaboy is?" Mary shook her head. "It is a snuff scented with attar of roses, of which he was passionately fond. He acquired the habit when he was fighting in the West Indies. Long ago. Long ago. And of course this vision of him was nothing but an hallucination caused by weakness. Nothing but that. There cannot be anything before us when we lie like this. And yet I wonder. I cannot feel perfectly sure." Mary did not know what to say. Here was really an opportunity for a clergyman to be useful; but she was afraid of suggesting such a visitor. Yet her grandmother might be hoping that somebody would suggest a clergyman; for, although she would be too proud to ask for one herself, she might want one to be pressed upon her just as she had wanted the doctor pressed upon her. Mary decided to risk the proposal. "A clergyman?" echoed the old lady, clutching at her vinaigrette. "A clergyman?" she repeated. "Thank you, my dear, but I should find a clergyman in my bedroom as uncomfortable as I should find a large black retriever dog, and about as useful. I'm afraid that my wandering conversation has given you the impression that my mind is wandering. I thought I had made it perfectly plain that I considered the vision of my father an hallucination." Mary begged her grandmother's pardon, and after a short silence the old lady inquired graciously after the children. "What a pity," she said, "that Richard will not become Sir Richard when I die. I am sorry now that I allowed Barton to be sold. I think, had I known how much of a Flower I was going to have for a great-grandson, I should not have done so. However, regrets are useless. You are happy, are you not?" "Why, yes, Grandmamma. What makes you ask that?"