CHAPTER XVII.
The poor old grandmother who sang so constantly was dying.
We were all standing about her bed at nightfall one spring evening.

She had been ailing scarcely more than forty-eight hours; but the doctor said that on account of her great age she could not rally, and he pronounced her end to be very near.
Her mind had become clear; she no longer mistook our names, and in a sweet calm voice she begged us to remain near her--it was doubtless the voice of other days, the one that I had never heard before.
As I stood close to my father's side I turned my eyes from my dying grandmother, and they wandered about the room with its old-fashioned furniture.

I looked especially at the pictures of bouquets in vases that hung upon the wall.

Oh! those poor little water colors in my grandmother's room, how ingenuous they were! They all bore this inscription: "A Bouquet for my mother," and under this there was a little verse of four lines dedicated to her which I could now read and understand.

These works of art had been painted by my father in his early boyhood, and he had presented them to his mother upon each joyful anniversary.