DEATH OF MRS. JENKIN 225 



tian gentlemen should.' A last pleasure was 

 secured for him. He had been waiting with pain- 

 ful interest for news of Gordon and Khartoum ; 

 and by great good fortune, a false report reached 

 him that the city was relieved, and the men of 

 Sussex (his old neighbours) had been the first 

 to enter. He sat up in bed and gave three cheers 

 for the Sussex regiment. The subsequent correc- 

 tion, if it came in time, was prudently withheld 

 from the dying man. An hour before midnight 

 on the fifth of February, he passed away : aged 

 eighty-four. 



Word of his death was kept from Mrs. Jenkin ; Death of 

 and she survived him no more than nine and jenkin. 

 forty hours. On the day before her death, she 

 received a letter from her old friend Miss Bell 

 of Manchester, knew the hand, kissed the envelope 

 and laid it on her heart ; so that she too died 

 upon a pleasure. Half an hour after midnight, 

 on the eighth of February, she fell asleep : it is 

 supposed in her seventy-eighth year. 



Thus, in the space of less than ten months. Effect on 

 the four seniors of this family were taken away ; ^^°**"^* 

 but taken with such features of opportunity in 

 time or pleasant courage in the sufferer, that 

 grief was tempered with a kind of admiration. 

 The effect on Fleeming was profound. His pious 

 optimism increased and became touched with 

 something mystic and filial. * The grave is not 

 p 



