It was more like a going to sleep than like a death.

She lay for two days in a dozing state, smiling whenever Mercy spoke to her, and making great efforts to swallow food whenever Mercy offered it to her.

At last she closed her eyes, turned her head on one side, as if for a sounder sleep, and never moved again.
However we may think we are longing for the release from suffering to come to one we love, when it does come, it is a blow, is a shock.

Hundreds of times Mercy had said to herself in the course of the winter, "Oh, if God would only take my mother to heaven! Her death would be easier to bear than this." But now she would have called her back, if she could.

The silent house, the empty room, still more terrible the long empty hours in which nobody needed her help, all wrung Mercy's heart.