“Sometimes I think Brother Ass is the wise one. Finally we are forced to listen to him and once in a while he leads us to wisdom.” Jane smiled mischievously. “I used to get very cross about things that didn’t matter at all in my fifties. If Hannah had been with me then we should have had some fearful battles. But the Lord spared me, for then I could live alone, took out my angers by weeding and botanizing. Well, now, you see, I am a very old lady indeed, and I have given up anger. It just isn’t in me. Strange, isn’t it?”

She drank thirstily from her demitasse and set it down.

“Coffee is my liquor now,” she said with a smile. “Alcohol, even a sip, makes me dizzy.” She reached over then and took Christina’s hand in hers. “Hannah’s goodness has taught me a great deal.”

“I should have guessed it was the other way around.”

“Well, you’d be wrong,” Jane said with some of her old tartness. “That woman is clearly a saint.”

“You used to say she was a dragon.”

“Perhaps,” Jane said with a smile, “I was the dragon myself.” She let Christina’s hand fall and looked thoughtfully down at her own hands. “I was an awful egoist.”

“Nonsense, you are a great person, and always were.”

“I had illusions. One thing about very old age, all the illusions wither away. I had illusions that I might do some first-rate work in botany—on ferns, you know. Well, I never did.”

“What you did was educate a village. Think what you did for John! Without you he might not be alive.”

“Oh, I had my triumphs,” Jane said with a lift of her chin. Then she sighed. “It’s been a good life, Christina. I have no regrets. And now,” she added in a murmur, “I am learning to die. You know, it is a great adventure—but one can’t help being sometimes frightened by the immense Nowhere, the immense leap into darkness.”

“Or into light. How can we be sure?”

“We can’t. All I seem to know is some blessing to come. I want to be ready to be blessed.” She gave a low laugh. “And that means giving up one thing after another with grace—if one can. The hardest thing has been giving up reading. Lately my eyes blur in a queer way. So I manage a poem a day, and that is it.”

“Would you like me to come and read to you for an hour now and then?”

“Darling person, you have enough on your hands. No, thank you, I should fall asleep, I fear, before the hour was up.”

“I mustn’t stay too long. This has been heaven.” Christina got up and bent down to kiss Jane’s hands.

“Yes, Hannah,” she said as the kitchen door opened cautiously, “you are right, and I’m just going.”