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Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2693, 24 December 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

over something which the firm fingers i seemed to shield a s well as hold. My _glnnce caught the gray and rose of an. ; illumined book cover; it was the npple- , .blossom copy for; Mrs Chandler. I' glanced from it to Mrs Ford-Benedict’s pale, changed face. “She was my mother, you knowyh said Mrs Ford-Benedict unsteadily. “I know,” said Elizabeth in 1 or. •gentle voice. ■«***: „ * : * * • ■ )/- “It ha s all been so sudden. We can’t believe it,” Mrs Ford-Benedict went on a with the pathetic absorption of grief. “She was only ill three days and she never made any complaint about anything, so we didn’t realise she was so very ill till that day. 1 had a houseful of people from town for the hunt dinner, and we were so crowded that Mother would give up her rooms and sleep in the governess's old room on the fourth floor. She was always doing things like that. ~ . . I couldn’t stop her.; . . . She had a bed up there, and her writing things, . and her sewing-basket—for she wo.ltd do the household mending for all I could say. And she was alway s doing things for the servants. “But that last day. . . . she was conscious but a little while, and she called me to her and gave me this.” She touched the illumined sheets with reverent hands. “And when she said she had written it herself, every word, I. . _ . . I realised that perhaps there was more to Mother than we’d | ever suspected. She had never seemed to care for intellectual things. Perhaps you don’t know what a hard life .she had led. My father’s death left her with all of ns to bring up; and then there was my blind brother, too. She had to work like a slave. But now that I have thi s poem I can’t help feeling, as I said, that there was something more to Mother than just drudgery. It is good to know that she achieved one beautiful thing; that she really was a poet—if just this once.” I looked at Elizabeth. Elizabeth looked back at me. I do not think -that we saw each other. “Yes,” said Elizabeth' very softly. “I think that you may assure yourself that she , was a true poet—always; a true poet, and many times over —not just —this once.”