No man ever made a more handsome corpse, considering
how old, and thin, and haggard he had grown of late, and how gray his
hair had turned. He held the nosegay between his fingers, across his
breast as natural as life, and reminded us all of the blessed saint,
Pope Gregory, who was called to glory some hundred years before either
you or I was born.
"Your mother's quite comfortable; and there she sits in her ould
chair, rocking to and fro all day long, and never speaking a word to
nobody, thinking about heaven, I dare to say; which is just what she
ought to do, seeing that she stands a very pretty chance of going
there in the course of a month or so. Divil a word has she ever said
since your father's departure, but then she screamed and yelled enough
to last for seven years at the least. She screamed away all her senses
anyhow, for she has done nothing since but cough, cough, and fumble at
her pater-nosters--a very blessed way to pass the remainder of her
days, seeing that I expect her to drop every minute like an over-ripe
sleepy pear. So don't think any more about her, my son, for without
you are back in a jiffy, her body will be laid in consecrated ground,
and her happy, blessed soul in purgatory. _Pax vobiscum._ Amen! amen!
"And now having disposed of your father and your mother so much to
your satisfaction, I'll just tell you that Ella's mother died in the
convent at Dieppe, but whether she kept her secret or not I do not
know; but this I do know, that if she didn't relieve her soul by
confession, she's damned to all eternity.
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