He told me that she died Christmas night.She came to his house on her old mare, in the rain and snow the night before, to get him to go to see someone, some "friend" of hers who was sick.He said she had more sick friends than anyone he ever knew; he told her that he was sick himself and could not go; but she was so importunate that he promised to go next morning (she was always very worrying).He said she was wet and shivering then (she never had any idea about really protecting herself), and that she appeared to have a wretched cold.She had been riding all day seeing about a Christmas-tree for the poor children.He urged her to stop and spend the night, but she insisted that she must go on, though it was nearly dark and raining hard, and the roads would have mired a cat (she was always self-willed).Next day he went to see the sick woman, and when he arrived he found her in one bed and Cousin Fanny in another, in the same room.When he had examined the patient, he turned and asked Cousin Fanny what was the matter with her."Oh, just a little cold, a little trouble in the chest, as Theodore Hook said," she replied.
"But I know how to doctor myself." Something about her voice struck him.
He went over to her and looked at her, and found her suffering from acute pneumonia.He at once set to work on her.He took the other patient up in his arms and carried her into another room, where he told her that Cousin Fanny was a desperately ill woman."She was actually dying then, sir,"he said to me, "and she died that night.When she arrived at the place the night before, which was not until after nine o'clock, she had gone to the stable herself to put up her old mare, or rather to see that she was fed -- she always did that --so when she got into the house she was wet and chilled through, and she had to go to bed.She must have had on wet clothes," he said.
I asked him if she knew she was going to die.He said he did not think she did; that he did not tell her, and she talked about nothing except her Christmas-tree and the people she wanted to see.He heard her praying in the night, "and, by the way," he said, "she mentioned you.
She shortly became rather delirious, and wandered a good deal, talking of things that must have happened when she was young;spoke of going to see her mother somewhere.The last thing she ever said was something about fashion, which," he said, "showed how ingrained is vanity in the female mind." The doctor knows something of human nature.
He concluded what he had to say with, "She was in some respects a very remarkable woman -- if she had not been an old maid.
I do not suppose that she ever drew a well breath in her life.
Not that I think old maids cannot be very acceptable women," he apologized.
"They are sometimes very useful." The doctor was a rather enlightened man.
Some of her relatives got there in time for the funeral, and a good many of the poor people came; and she was carried in a little old spring wagon, drawn by Fashion, through the snow, to the old home place, where Scroggs very kindly let them dig the grave, and was buried there in the old graveyard in the garden, in a vacant space just beside her mother, with the children around her.I really miss her a great deal.
The other boys say they do the same.I suppose it is the trouble she used to give us.
The old set are all doing well.Doug is a professor.
He says the word "spinster" gave him a twist to philology.
Old Blinky is in Paris.He had a picture in the salon last year, an autumn landscape, called "Le Cote du Bois".I believe the translation of that is "The Woodside".His coloring is said to be nature itself.To think of old Blinky being a great artist!
Little Kitty is now a big girl, and is doing finely at school.
I have told her she must not be an old maid.Joe is a preacher with a church in the purlieus of a large city.I was there not long ago.
He had a choral service.The Gregorian music carried me back to old times.
He preached on the text, "I was sick, and ye visited me." It was such a fine sermon, and he had such a large congregation, that I asked why he did not go to a finer church.He said he was "carrying soup to Mrs.Ronquist." By the way, his organist was a splendid musician.
She introduced herself to me.It was Scroggs's daughter.She is married, and can walk as well as I can.She had a little girl with her that I think she called "Fanny".I do not think that was Mrs.Scroggs's name.
Frank is now a doctor, or rather a surgeon, in the same city with Joe, and becoming very distinguished.The other day he performed a great operation, saving a woman's life, which was in all the papers.
He said to an interviewer that he became a surgeon from dressing a sore on an old mare's back.I wonder what he was talking about?
He is about to start a woman's hospital for poor women.
Cousin Fanny would have been glad of that; she was always proud of Frank.
She would as likely as not have quoted that verse from Tennyson's song about the echoes.She sleeps now under the myrtle at Scroggs's.
I have often thought of what that doctor said about her:
that she would have been a very remarkable woman, if she had not been an old maid -- I mean, a spinster.
