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.
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