She had from time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or learnt it from private or unimpeachable information.

Latterly she had met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise.
But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety and restless.

She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of remonstrances.

Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen.

The kitchen had been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it.
There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the old arm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled her words, for she had died on the very day she had predicted.
She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a very antiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other ways of being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much as insulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of which gnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitive as lying closer to the Mother.
At all events, old Mrs.Talbot did seem to have won certain confidences from life and death refused to more consciously alert ears.