She came upon us at the foot of the stairs, with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and take the medicine.

Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy her; so she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving us the unwholesome cake.
Presently the thing happened which we were dreading.

There was a sound of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.
"Oh, my God!" that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses.
"Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death.

If I had obeyed, and kept him in the house, this would not have happened.

And I am rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his own mother, to be his friend." And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not be comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.
It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves for anything they have done.